Humans

Chapter Twenty-nine

The last time Mary and Ponter had taken a ride down this metal-cage elevator, Mary had tried to make him understand that she did like him—indeed, that she liked him a lot—but that she hadn’t been ready to start a relationship. She’d told Ponter about what had happened to her at York University, making him the only person to that point besides Keisha, the rape-crisis counselor, that Mary had told about it. Ponter’s emotions had mirrored Mary’s own: general confusion plus profound anger aimed at the rapist, whoever he might be. During that trip down, Mary had thought she was about to lose Ponter forever.

As they again made the long, long descent to the Creighton Mine’s sixty-eight-hundred-foot level, Mary couldn’t help recalling all of that, and she supposed the awkward silence from Ponter meant that he was remembering it, too.

There’d been some discussion about installing a new high-speed elevator directly down to the neutrino-observatory chamber, but the logistics were formidable. To sink a new shaft through two kilometers of gabbroic granite would be a major undertaking, and the Inco geologists weren’t sure that the rock could take it.

There’d also been talk about replacing Inco’s old open-cage elevator with a more luxurious, modern one—but that presupposed it would only be used for runs to and from the portal. In fact, the Creighton Mine was an active nickel-harvesting operation, and although Inco had been the soul of cooperation, they still had to move hundreds of miners up and down that shaft each day.

Indeed, unlike the last time, when Mary and Ponter had had the entire car to themselves, they were sharing this ride with six miners, heading down to the fifty-two-hundred-foot level. The group was evenly mixed between those who were politely looking at the muddy metal floor—there was no inside level indicator to watch studiously as one did in an office-building lift—and those who were staring quite openly at Ponter.

The elevator thundered down its rough-hewn shaft, passing the forty-six-hundred-foot level—painted signs outside revealed the location. Having been mined out, that level was now used as an arboretum to grow trees for reforestation projects around Sudbury.

The elevator then shuddered to a stop on the level the miners wanted, and the door rattled up, letting them disembark. Mary watched them depart: men she would have previously thought of as robust specimens, but who had looked positively feeble next to Ponter.

Ponter operated the bell that signaled the lift operator up on the surface, letting him know the miners were clear. The cab rumbled into motion again. It really was too noisy to talk, anyway—the conversation they’d had the last time had been mostly shouted, for all its delicate content.

Finally, the cab arrived at the sixty-eight-hundred-foot level. The temperature here was a constant, stifling forty-one degrees Celsius, and the air pressure was thirty percent above that on the surface.

At least here, the transportation situation had been improved. Instead of having to walk the twelve hundred meters horizontally to the SNO facility, a rather nifty all-terrain vehicle—a kind of dune buggy thing, with a sticker of the SNO logo on its front—was waiting for them. Two more such vehicles were stationed down here now, although the others must have been somewhere else.

Ponter gestured for Mary to take the driver’s seat. Mary suppressed a grin; the big guy knew a lot of things, but how to drive wasn’t one of them. He got in next to her. Mary took a minute to familiarize herself with the dashboard, and read the various warnings and instructions that had been affixed to it. It didn’t really look any more difficult than a golf cart. She turned the key—it was attached to the dashboard with a chain, so that no one could accidentally walk off with it—and they set off down the tunnel, avoiding the railway tracks used for the ore cars. It normally took twenty minutes to walk to the SNO facility from the elevator station; the cart got them there in four.

Ironically, now that it was being used for travel to another world, the SNO facility wasn’t being kept in clean-room conditions anymore. A visit to the shower stalls had been mandatory, and although they were still available for those who felt too grimy after the trip down from the surface, Ponter and Mary just walked right past them. And both doors were propped open to the vacuum chamber that used to suck dirt off of visitors to SNO. Ponter shouldered through, and Mary followed behind him.

They walked past all the Rube Goldberg plumbing contraptions that had once serviced the heavy-water tank, and made their way through the control room—which, as always now, had two armed Canadian Forces guards on hand.

“Hello, Envoy Boddit,” said one of the guards, rising from the chair he’d been sitting in.

“Hello,” said Ponter, speaking for himself; he had acquired a couple of hundred words of English by now, which he could use—assuming he could pronounce them—without Hak’s intervention.

“And you’re Professor Vaughan, aren’t you?” asked the soldier—doubtless, his rank was somehow indicated on his uniform, but Mary had no idea how to read it.

“That’s right,” Mary said.

“I’ve seen you on TV,” said the soldier. “First time through for you, isn’t it, ma’am?”

Mary nodded.

“Well, I’m sure you’ve been briefed on the procedure. I need to see your passport, and we have to take a DNA sample.”

Mary did indeed have a passport. She’d first gotten one when she went to Germany to extract DNA from the Neanderthal type specimen at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, and she’d renewed it since—why did Canadian passports last for only five years, instead of the ten that American passports did? She fished the passport out of her purse and presented it to the man. Ironically, she looked older in the photo than she did in life; it had been taken before she started dyeing her hair to cover the gray.

She then opened her mouth, and let the soldier run a Q-Tip along the inside of her right cheek—the guy’s technique was a little rough, thought Mary; you didn’t have to swipe that hard to get cells to slough off.

“All right, ma’am,” said the soldier. “Have a safe trip.”

Mary let Ponter lead the way out onto the metal deck that formed a roof over the ten-story-tall barrel-shaped cavern that used to house the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Instead of having to descend through a hatch just a meter on a side, as she’d done the last time she was here, a large opening had been carved into the decking, and an elevator had been installed—Ponter remarked that it was new since his latest arrival. The elevator had acrylic see-through walls; they’d been made especially for this site by Polycast, the company that had manufactured the acrylic panels of which the now-dismantled heavy-water containment sphere had been composed.

The elevator was the first of many modifications planned for this chamber. If the portal really did stay open for years, the chamber would be filled in with ten stories of facilities, including customs offices, hospital rooms, and even a few hotel suites. Currently, though, the elevator had only two stops: the chamber’s rocky floor, and, three stories above that, the staging area that had been built up around the portal. Ponter and Mary got off at the staging area, a wide wooden platform with yet another couple of soldiers stationed on it. Along one side of the platform were the flags of the United Nations and the three countries that had jointly funded SNO: Canada, the United States, and Great Britain.

And, in front of her, was—

It indeed seemed to have acquired the popular name of “the portal,” but because of the Derkers tube protruding through it, it looked more like a tunnel. Mary’s heart was pounding; she could see through it—see the Neanderthal world, and—

My God, thought Mary. My God.

A brawny figure had passed by the far end of the tunnel, someone working on the other side.

Another Neanderthal.

Mary had seen much of Ponter and some of Tukana. Still, she had trouble really accepting that there were millions of other Neanderthals, but…

But there was another one, down the tunnel.

She took a deep breath, and, since Ponter was gallantly indicating she should go first, Mary Vaughan, citizen of one Earth, started walking down the cylindrical bridge that led to another Earth.

A flat insert had been crafted for the bottom of the Derkers tube, making a smooth walkway. Mary could see the blue ring surrounding the tube, visible through its translucent white walls: the actual portal, the opening, the discontinuity.

She reached the threshold of that discontinuity, and stopped. Yes, Ponter had gone through in both directions now, and, yes, a number of Homo sapiens had preceded her in crossing over, but…

Mary broke into a sweat, and not just because of the subterranean heat.

Ponter’s hand landed on her shoulder. For one horrible second, Mary thought he was going to push her through.

But of course he didn’t. “Take your time,” he whispered, in English. “Go when you are comfortable.”

Mary nodded. She took a deep breath and stepped forward.

It felt like a ring of ants crawling over her body from front to back as she stepped across the threshold. She’d started with a slow step, but quickly hopped forward to put an end to the unsettling sensation.

And there she was—centimeters, and tens of thousands of years of divergence, from the world she knew.

She continued down to the end of the tunnel, Ponter’s footfalls heavy behind her. And then she stepped out, into what she knew must be the quantum-computing chamber. Unlike the SNO cavity, which had been co-opted from its original purpose, Ponter’s quantum computer was still fully operational; indeed, Mary was given to understand that without it, the portal would slam shut.

Four Neanderthals stood in front of her, all male. One was wearing a garish silver outfit; the others were wearing sleeveless shirts and the same strange pants with boots attached that Ponter had arrived in. All of them, like Ponter, had their light-colored hair parted precisely in the center; all were hugely muscled, with short limbs; all had undulating browridges; all had massive, potato-like noses.

Ponter’s voice came from behind her, speaking in the Neanderthal language. Mary swung around in surprise. She heard Ponter whisper that language all the time, with Hak translating the words into English at a much-louder volume, but, till now, she’d never heard Ponter speak loudly and clearly in his native tongue. Whatever he’d said must have been a joke of some kind, as all four of the Neanderthals emitted deep, barking laughs.

Mary stepped away from the mouth of the tunnel, letting Ponter pass. And then—

She’d heard Ponter talk frequently about Adikor, of course, and had understood intellectually that Ponter had a male lover, but…

But, despite her liberal leanings, despite all her mental preparations, despite the gay men she knew back on her Earth, she felt her stomach clench as Ponter embraced the Neanderthal who must be Adikor. They hugged long and hard, and Ponter’s broad face pressed against Adikor’s hairy cheek.

Mary realized in an instant what she was feeling, but, God, it had been decades since she’d experienced that particular emotion, and it shamed her. She wasn’t repulsed by the display of same-sex affection; not at all—hell, you couldn’t flip channels on Toronto TV on a Friday night without running into some gay porn. No, she was…

It was shameful, and she knew she’d have to get over it fast if she was ever to have a long-term relationship with Ponter.

She was jealous.

Ponter let Adikor go, then he held up his left arm, facing its inside toward Adikor. Adikor raised his arm in a matching gesture, and Mary saw symbols flash across the displays on each man’s Companion implant; Ponter was presumably receiving his accumulated messages from Adikor, to whom they had been forwarded in his absence.

They lowered their arms at the same time, but Ponter only brought his halfway down, and he pivoted his forearm at the elbow to indicate Mary. “Prisap tah Mare Vonnnn daballita sohl,” he said, but, since he wasn’t addressing her, Hak provided no translation.

Adikor stepped forward, smiling. He had a kind face, broader than Ponter’s—indeed, as broad as a dinner plate. And his round deep-set eyes were an astonishing teal color. The overall effect was a Flintstones version of the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Ponter’s voice dropped to a whisper, and Hak’s voice provided a normal-volume translation. “Mare, this is my man-mate, Scholar Adikor Huld.”

“Hollow,” said Adikor. Mary was baffled for a moment, then realized that Adikor was trying to say “hello,” but hadn’t quite gotten the vowel sounds right. Still, she was impressed, and touched, that he’d tried to learn some English.

“Hello,” said Mary. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Adikor tipped his head, presumably listening to a translation through his own Companion’s cochlear implants, and then, in a startlingly normal response, he smiled, and, in his accented English, said, “All good, I hope.”

Mary couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, yes,” she said.

“And this,” said Hak’s voice, speaking for Ponter, “is an Exhibitionist.”

Mary was taken aback. Ponter was referring to the guy dressed all in silver. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d do if this strange Neanderthal whipped it out in front of her. “Umm, pleased to meet you,” she said.

The stranger didn’t have the trick down of whispering his own words while his Companion translated loudly. Mary had to struggle to separate the Neanderthal noise from the English. “I have learned,” she picked out, “that in your world, I might be called a reporter. I go to interesting places, and let people tune into what my Companion is broadcasting.”

“All Exhibitionists wear silver,” said Ponter, “and nobody else does. If you see someone dressed this way, be warned that many thousands of people are watching you.”

“Ah-hah!” said Mary. “An Exhibitionist. Yes, I remember you telling me about them now.”

Ponter introduced the two other Neanderthals, as well. One was an enforcer, apparently something akin to a cop, and the other was a portly Neanderthal roboticist named Dern.

For half a second, the feminist in Mary was outraged that no women were present in the quantum-computing facility, but of course there would be no women anywhere around here; the mine, she knew, was located beyond Saldak Rim.

Ponter led Mary through the grid of cylinders clamped to the floor, up a short flight of stairs, through a door, and out into the control room. Mary was chilled; the Neanderthals didn’t like heat, and it would naturally have been just as hot this far below the surface here as it had been in Mary’s world. They clearly air-conditioned the rest of the facility; indeed, Mary looked down and was embarrassed to see her nipples pushing out against her top. “How do you keep it cool down here?” she asked.

“Superconductivity heat pumps,” said Ponter. “They work like an established scientific fact.”

Mary looked around the control room. She was surprised at how strange the consoles looked. She hadn’t ever thought about the fact that human industrial designers had arbitrarily decided what instrumentation should look like, that their “high-tech” designs were only one possible way to go. Instead of the burnished metal and black and gray colors of so much human equipment, these consoles were mostly a coral pink, had no sharp corners, and seemed to have little control doo-dads that pulled out rather than pushed in. There were no LEDs, no dials, and no toggle switches. Instead, indicators seemed to be reflective, rather than illuminated, and text displays were in dark blue symbols on a soft gray background; she would have thought them preprinted labels, but the strings of characters being shown kept changing.

Ponter moved her quickly through the small room, and they came to the decontamination facility. Before she knew what was happening, Ponter had undone the shoulder clasps on his shirt and pulled it off. A second later, he was removing his pants. He stuffed his clothes into a cylindrical hamper and walked into the chamber, which had a circular floor. Ponter stood still and the floor slowly turned, presenting first his broad back—and all that was below it—and then his broad chest—and all that was below that—to her. She could see laser emitters on one side of the chamber, and pinpoints of laser light hitting the opposite side, passing through Ponter’s body as if it were not even there, but, so she understood, zapping foreign biomolecules as they did so.

It took several minutes, and several rotations, for the process to be completed. Mary tried to keep her eyes from dropping down. Ponter was utterly unselfconscious. The previous times she’d seen him naked had been in dim light, but here—

Here he was illuminated with all the intensity of a hardcore porno film. His body was mostly covered with fine blond hair, his abdominal muscles were firm, his pectorals almost made him look buxom, and…

And she looked away; she knew she shouldn’t be staring.

Finally, Ponter was done. He stepped out of the chamber, and gestured for Mary to take her turn.

And suddenly Mary’s heart jumped. She’d been briefed about the decontamination procedure, but…

But it had never occurred to her that Ponter would be watching her as she went through it. Of course, she could simply tell him that that made her uncomfortable, but…

Mary took a deep breath. When in Rome…

She undid her blouse, and put it in the same hamper Ponter had used. She removed her black shoes, and, after a confirming nod from Ponter, put those in the hamper as well. She then removed her pants, and—

And there she was, in cream-colored bra and white panties.

If the lasers could zap bacteria and viruses right through her skin, they should be able to do that through her underwear, too, but…

But her underwear, and all her clothes, her purse, and her luggage, were to be sonically cleaned and exposed to high intensity ultraviolet. The lasers were good at getting microbes; they weren’t nearly powerful enough to get the much larger mites and ticks that could be lurking in the folds of fabric. Everything, Ponter said, would be delivered to them later, after a thorough cleaning.

Mary reached up and unclasped her bra. She remembered back in college when she could pass the pencil test, but those days were long behind her. He breasts flopped down. Mary instinctively crossed her arms over her chest, but she had to lower them to take off her panties. She wasn’t quite sure whether it was more ladylike to face forward or backward as she peeled them off; either way displayed a lot of flesh in unflattering geometry. At last, she turned around, and quickly pulled them down, straightening up as fast as she could.

Ponter was still looking on, smiling encouragingly. If the harsher light here made her any less attractive to him than the dim light in the hotel room, he gave no sign.

Mary put her panties into the hamper and stepped into the chamber, which began its humiliating rotation. Yes, she had looked at Ponter, but her gaze had been admiring—he was, after all, very well muscled, and, not to put too fine a point on it, quite nicely hung, too.

But she was a woman on a collision course with forty, with twenty pounds of fat she didn’t need, with pubic hair that made abundantly plain the fact that she dyed the hair on her head. How in God’s name could Ponter possibly be admiring all that soft whiteness he was seeing?

Mary closed her eyes and waited for the procedure to finish. She didn’t feel a thing; whatever the lasers were doing to her innards was completely painless.

At last, it was over. Mary stepped through to the other side of the chamber, and Ponter led her to another room where they could dress. He indicated a wall full of cubic cubbyholes, each containing clothes. “Try the upper-right,” said Ponter. “They are arranged in ascending order of size; that one should be the smallest.”

The smallest, thought Mary, and she cheered up a little. In this world, it seemed she’d get to shop in the petite section.

Mary got dressed as quickly as she could, and Ponter led her to the elevator station. Once again, Mary was taken aback by the immediately obvious differences between Gliksin and Barast technology. The elevator cab was circular, with a couple of pedals on the floor to operate it. Ponter stomped on one of them, and the car started going up. How handy that would be when one’s arms were full! Mary had once accidentally dumped all her groceries, including a carton of eggs, onto the floor of the elevator at her condo.

There were four vertical rods equally spaced around the interior. At first Mary thought they were structural columns, but they weren’t. Shortly after they’d started the long ride up—presumably two kilometers, just like on her Earth—Ponter started shimmying his back against one of the poles. It was a back-scratching device, and seemed a good way to make use of the time.

Mary wondered aloud about the idea of a circular cab, though. Wouldn’t it tend to rotate within its shaft?

Ponter nodded his massive head. “That is the idea,” Hak said, translating for him. “The lifting mechanism is in the shaft walls, rather than overhead as in your elevators. The channels that guide the elevator are not perfectly vertical. Rather, they spiral around very gently. In this particular shaft, the elevator starts off facing east at the bottom, but will be facing west by the time we reach the top.”

During the trip up, Mary also had a chance to notice the lighting being used. “My God,” she said, looking up, “is that luciferin?”

A glass tube ran around the upper edge of the cylinder, filled with a liquid that was glowing with greenish blue light.

Hak bleeped.

“Luciferin,” repeated Mary. “It’s the substance that fireflies use to make their tails glow.”

“Ah,” said Ponter. “Yes, this is a similar catalytic reaction. It is our principal source of indoor illumination.”

Mary nodded to herself. Of course the Neanderthals, adapted for a cold environment, wouldn’t like incandescent bulbs that give off more heat than light. The luciferin/luciferase reaction was almost completely efficient, producing light with hardly any heat.

The elevator continued its ascent, the blue-green illumination making Ponter’s pale skin look oddly silverish and his golden brown irises seem almost yellow. There were ventilation holes in the roof and floor of the cab, creating a bit of a breeze, and Mary hugged herself against the chill.

“Sorry,” said Ponter, noting her actions.

“That’s okay,” said Mary. “I know you like it cold.”

“It is not that,” said Ponter. “Pheromones build up in a closed space like this, and the ride up is a long one. The vents make sure passengers are not overly influenced by each other’s scents.”

Mary shook her head in wonder. She hadn’t even made it out of the mine yet, and she was already overwhelmed by the differences—and she’d known she was heading to another world! Her heart again went out to Ponter, who had originally arrived on her Earth with no warning, but had somehow managed to keep his sanity.

At last the elevator reached the top, and the door opened. Even that, though, happened in an unfamiliar way, with the door, which had appeared seamless, folding out of the way like an accordion.

They were in a square chamber perhaps five meters on a side. Its walls were lime green, and the ceiling was low. Ponter went over to a shelf and brought back a small flat box that seemed to be made of something like blue cardboard. He opened the box and removed a shiny construct of metal and plastic.

“The High Gray Council realizes it has no choice but to let people from your world visit ours,” Ponter said, “but Adikor said they have imposed one condition. You must wear this.” He held up the object, and Mary could see that it was a metal band, with a face on it very much like Hak’s.

“Companions are normally implants,” said Ponter. “But we understand that subjecting a casual visitor to surgery is too much to ask. However, this band is unremovable, except in this facility; that is, the computer within knows its location and will only allow the clasp to reopen here.”

Mary nodded. “I understand.” She held out her right arm.

“It is usual,” said Ponter, “for the Companion to go on the left arm, unless the bearer is left-handed.”

Mary retracted one arm, and extended the other. Ponter busied himself with attaching the Companion. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” said Mary. “Are most Neanderthals right-handed?”

“About ninety percent are, yes.”

“That’s what we thought from the fossil record.”

Ponter’s eyebrow rolled up. “How could you possibly determine handedness from fossils? I do not believe we have any idea what the distribution of hand preferences was among ancient Gliksins on this world.”

Mary smiled, pleased at the ingenuity of her species. “It came from fossil teeth.”

“What have teeth got to do with handedness?”

“A study was done of eighty teeth from twenty individual Neanderthals. See, we figured with those great jaws of yours, you probably used your teeth as clamps, to hold hides in place while you defleshed them. Well, hides are abrasive, and they grind down the front of the teeth, leaving little nicks. In eighteen of the individuals, the nicks angled toward the right—which is what you’d expect if a scraper was being used on the hide with the right hand, pulling the hide in that direction.”

Ponter made what Mary had learned was the Neanderthal “impressed” face, which consisted of a sucking in of the lips, and a bunching toward the center of the eyebrow. “Excellent reasoning,” said Ponter. “In fact, to this day, we hold flensing parties, where hides are cleaned in that manner; of course, there are other, mechanized techniques, but such parties are a social ritual.”

Ponter paused for a moment, then: “Speaking of hides…” He walked to the opposite side of the room, the wall of which was lined with fur coats, hanging, it appeared, from shoulder clamps attached to a horizontal bar. “Please select one,” he said. “Again, those at the right are the smallest.”

Mary pointed at one, and Ponter did something she didn’t catch that caused one of the coats to be released from the clamps. She wasn’t quite sure how to put it on—it seemed to open at the side, rather than the shoulders, but Ponter helped her into it. There was a part of Mary that thought about objecting; she never wore natural fur back home, but this was, of course, a different place.

It certainly wasn’t a luxurious pelt, like mink or sable; it was coarse, and an uneven reddish brown. “What kind of fur is it?” said Mary, as Ponter did up the clasps that sealed her within the jacket.

“Mammoth,” he said.

Mary’s eyes went wide. It might not be as nice as mink, but a mammoth coat would be worth infinitely more on her world.

Ponter didn’t bother with a jacket for himself. He started walking toward the door. This one was more normal, attached to a single vertical tube that let it swing just as though it were on hinges. Ponter opened it, and—

And there they were, on the surface.

And suddenly all the strangeness evaporated.

This was Earth—the Earth she knew. The sun, low in the western sky, looked exactly as she was used to seeing it. The sky was blue. The trees were pines and birches and other varieties she recognized.

“It’s cold,” she said. Indeed, it felt about four degrees cooler than the Sudbury surface they’d left behind.

Ponter smiled. “It is lovely,” he said.

Suddenly, a sound caught Mary’s attention, and for one brief moment she thought perhaps a mammoth was bearing down on them to avenge its kin. But no, that wasn’t it. It was an air-cushion vehicle of some sort, cubic in shape but with rounded corners, flying across the rocky ground toward them. The sound Mary had heard seemed to be a combination of fans blowing downward that let it hover a small distance above the surface, and a large fan, like one of those on the boats used in the Everglades, blowing to the rear.

“Ah,” said Ponter, “the travel cube I called for.” Mary assumed he’d done it with Hak’s aid, and without the words translated into English. The strange vehicle settled down in front of them, and Mary could see that it had a Neanderthal driver, a hulking male who looked twenty years older than Ponter.

The cube’s clear side swung open, and the driver spoke to Ponter. Again, the words weren’t translated for Mary’s benefit, but she imagined they were the Neanderthal equivalent of “Where to, Mac?”

Ponter gestured for Mary to precede him into the car. “Now,” he said, “let me show you my world.”