Humans

Chapter Thirty-seven

Mary stormed out of the police station, seething. But she didn’t say a word until she and Ponter were back in her car, sitting in the parking lot.

Mary turned to him. “What the hell was that?” she demanded.

“I am sorry,” said Ponter.

“I’ll never get to analyze those specimens now,” said Mary. “Christ, I’m sure the only reason he didn’t charge you was because he’d have to report his own stupidity in letting you get near the evidence.”

“Again, I apologize,” said Ponter.

“What in God’s name were you thinking?”

Ponter was silent.

“Well? Well?”

“I know,” he said simply, “who committed Qaiser’s rape, and presumably yours as well.”

Mary, absolutely stunned, sagged back against the driver’s seat. “Who?”

“Your co-worker—I cannot say his full name properly. It is something like ‘Cor-nuh-luh-us.’”

“Cornelius? Cornelius Ruskin? No, that’s crazy.”

“Why? Does anything in his physical appearance contradict your recollections of that night?”

Mary was still huffing and puffing from shouting. But all the anger was gone from her voice, replaced with astonishment. “Well, no. I mean, sure, Cornelius has blue eyes—but lots of people do. And Cornelius doesn’t smoke.”

“Yes, he does,” said Ponter.

“I’ve never seen him.”

“The odor was on him when we met.”

“He might have been in one of the campus pubs and picked it up there.”

“No. It was on his breath, although he’d apparently tried to mask it with some chemical.”

Mary frowned. She knew a few secret smokers. “I didn’t smell anything.”

Ponter said nothing.

“Besides,” said Mary, “Cornelius wouldn’t hurt me or Qaiser. I mean, we were coworkers, and—”

Mary fell silent. Ponter finally prodded her. “Yes?”

“Well, I thought of us as coworkers. But he—he was just a sessional instructor. He had a Ph.D.—from Oxford, for God’s sake. But all he could get was sessional teaching assignments—not a full-time appointment, and certainly not tenure. But Qaiser and I…”

“Yes?” Ponter said again.

“Well, I’m a woman, but Qaiser really won the lottery when it came to tenure-track appointments in the sciences. She’s a woman and a visible minority. They say rape isn’t a sexual crime; it’s a crime of violence, of power. And Cornelius clearly felt he had none.”

“He also had access to the specimens refrigerator,” said Ponter, “and, as a geneticist himself, he surely suspected what a female geneticist might do under such circumstances. He would know to look for, and destroy, any evidence.”

“My God,” thought Mary. “But—no. No. It’s all circumstantial.”

“It was all circumstantial,” said Ponter, “until I got to examine the physical evidence of Qaiser’s rape—safely stored at the police station, where Ruskin could not get at it. I smelled him when we first met in the corridor outside your lab, and his smell, his scent, is on those specimens.”

“Are you sure?” asked Mary. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“I never forget a smell,” said Ponter.

“My God,” said Mary. “What should we do?”

“We could tell Enforcer Hobbes.”

“Yes, but—”

“What?”

“Well, this isn’t your world,” said Mary. “You can’t just demand that someone produce an alibi. There’s nothing in what you’ve said that would enable the police to require a DNA specimen from Ruskin.” He was no longer “Cornelius.”

“But I could testify about his scent…”

Mary shook her head. “There’s no precedent for accepting such claims, even as a lead. And even if Hobbes bought your assertion, he couldn’t even call Ruskin in for questioning based on it.”

“This world…” said Ponter, shaking his head in disgust.

“You are absolutely certain?” said Mary. “There isn’t a shadow of a doubt in your mind?”

“A shadow of—? Ah, I understand. Yes, I am absolutely certain.”

“Not just beyond a reasonable doubt?” asked Mary. “But beyond all doubt?”

“I have no doubt whatsoever.”

“None?”

“I know your noses are small, but my capability is not remarkable. All members of my species, and many other species, can do it.”

Mary thought about this. Dogs certainly could distinguish people by scent. There really was no reason to think Ponter was mistaken. “What can we do?” she asked.

Ponter was quiet for a long time. Finally, softly, he said, “You told me the reason you did not report the rape was because you feared your treatment at the hands of your judicial system.”

“So?” snapped Mary.

“I do not mean to aggravate,” said Ponter. “I just wanted to make sure I understood you correctly. What would happen to you or to your friend Qaiser if there were a public investigation?”

“Well, even if the DNA evidence were admissible—and it might not be—Ruskin’s attorney would try to prove that Qaiser and I had consented.”

“You should not have to go through that,” said Ponter. “No one should.”

“But if we don’t do something, Ruskin will strike again.”

“No,” said Ponter. “He will not.”

“Ponter, there’s nothing you can do.”

“Please drive me to the university.”

“Ponter, no. No, I won’t.”

“If you will not, I will walk there.”

“You don’t even know where it is.”

“Hak does.”

“Ponter, this is crazy. You can’t just kill him!”

Ponter touched his shoulder, over the bullet wound. “People in this world kill other people all the time.”

“No, Ponter. I won’t let you.”

“I must prevent him from raping again,” said Ponter.

“But—”

“And although you may be able to stop me today, or tomorrow, you will not be able to intercede forever. At some point, I will be able to elude you, return to the campus, and eliminate this problem.” He fixed his golden eyes on her. “The only question is whether that will happen before he rapes again. Do you really wish to delay me?”

Mary closed her eyes for a moment and listened as hard as she ever had in her life for God’s voice, listened to see whether He was going to intervene. But there was nothing.

“I can’t let you do this, Ponter. I can’t let you kill somebody in cold blood. Not even him.”

“He must be stopped.”

“Promise me,” said Mary. “Promise me you won’t.”

“Why do you care so much? He does not deserve to live.”

Mary took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Ponter, I know you think I’m being silly when I talk about an afterlife. But if you kill him, your soul will be punished. And if I let you kill him, my soul will be punished, too. Ruskin already gave me a taste of hell. I don’t want to spend eternity there.”

Ponter frowned. “I want to do this for you.”

“Not this. Not killing.”

“All right,” said Ponter at last. “All right. I will not kill him.”

“Do you promise? Do you swear?”

“I promise,” said Ponter. And then, after a moment, “Gristle.”

Mary nodded; that was the only kind of swearing Ponter knew how to do. But then she shook her head. “There’s a possibility you’re not considering,” she said at last.

“And that is?” said Ponter.

“That Qaiser and Cornelius had consensual sex before she was raped by someone else. It would hardly be the first time a man and a woman who worked together had been getting it on in the office.”

“I would not know,” said Ponter.

“Trust me. It happens all the time. And wouldn’t that leave his smell on—well, on her panties, and so forth?”

Bleep.

“Panties,” said Mary. “The, um, inner garments. What you saw in the specimen bag.”

“Yes. What you suggest is possible.”

“We have to be certain,” said Mary. “We have to be absolutely sure.”

“You could ask Qaiser,” Ponter said.

“She won’t tell me.”

“Why not? I thought you were friends.”

“We are. But Qaiser is married—bonded—to another man. And, trust me: that happens all the time, too.”

“Ah,” said Ponter. “Well…”

“I’m not sure that there’s anything we can do,” said Mary.

“There is much we can do, but you have made me promise not to.”

“That’s right. But…”

“We should let him know that he has been found out,” said Ponter. “That his movements are under surveillance.”

“I couldn’t face him.”

“No, of course not. But we could leave a note for him.”

“I’m not sure what good that would do,” said Mary.

Ponter held up his left hand. “It is the whole philosophy behind the Companion implants. If you know you are being observed, or that your actions are being recorded, then you modify your behavior. It has worked well in my world.”

Mary took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I suppose…I suppose it couldn’t hurt. What are you thinking of? Just an anonymous note?”

“Yes,” said Ponter.

“You mean, let him know that he’s being watched constantly from now on? That there’s no way he can get away with it again?” Mary considered this. “I suppose he’d have to be an idiot to rape again after he knows someone is on to him.”

“Indeed,” said Ponter.

“I guess a note could be slipped into his box at York.”

“No,” said Ponter. “It should not be left at York. He took steps to destroy evidence there already, after all. I presume he thought you would not return for an entire year, and so he could safely dispose of the specimens you had retained without anyone being able to work out exactly when they had disappeared. No, this note should be left at his dwelling.”

“His dwelling? You mean his home?”

“Yes,” said Ponter.

“I get it,” said Mary. “Nothing’s more threatening than someone knowing where you live.”

Ponter made a perplexed face, but said, “Do you know where his home is.”

“Not far from here,” said Mary. “He doesn’t have a car—he lives by himself, and can’t really afford one. I’ve given him lifts home a few times during snowstorms. It’s an apartment just off Jane Street—but no, wait. I know what building he lives in, but I have no idea what his apartment number is.”

“His is a multifamily dwelling, like yours?”

“Yes. Well, not nearly as nice as mine.”

“Will there not be a directory near the entrance identifying which unit houses which person?”

“We don’t do that anymore. We have code numbers and buzzboards—the whole idea is to prevent people from doing what we’re talking about: finding out exactly where someone lives.”

Ponter shook his head, astonished. “The lengths you Gliksins go to to avoid having to have Companion implants…”

“Come on,” said Mary. “Let’s drive by his building on the way back to my place. I’ll know it to see it, and at least we can get the street number.”

“Fine,” said Ponter.

Mary found herself tensing up as they drove along Finch, and turned onto the street that contained Ruskin’s apartment building. It wasn’t that she was afraid of running into him, she realized—although that would certainly freak her out. It was simply thinking about a possible, eventual rape trial. Do you know where the man you’re accusing lives, Ms. Vaughan? Have you ever been to his home? Really? And yet you say this was nonconsensual?

Driftwood, the area around Jane Street and Finch Avenue West, was not somewhere a sane person wanted to be for long. It was one of Toronto’s—hell, of North America’s—most crime-ridden neighborhoods. Its proximity to York was an embarrassment to the university, and probably, despite years of lobbying, the reason that the Spadina subway line had never been extended to the campus.

But Driftwood had one advantage: rents were cheap. And for someone trying to make ends meet on a sessional instructor’s piecework fees, someone who couldn’t afford a car, it was the only place within walking distance of the university that was affordable.

Ruskin’s apartment building was a white brick tower with rusting balconies filled with junk, and a third of the windows covered by taped-up newspaper or aluminum foil. The building looked to be about fifteen or sixteen stories tall, and—

“Wait!” said Mary.

“What?”

“He lives on the top floor! I remember now: he used to call it his ‘penthouse in the slums.’” She paused. “Of course, we still don’t know what unit number, but he’s lived here for at least two years. I’m sure his letter carrier knows him—we academics tend to get a lot of journals and things like that in the mail.”

“Yes?” said Ponter, clearly not understanding.

“Well, if we mail a letter to ‘Cornelius Ruskin, Ph.D.’ at this address, and simply say ‘Top Floor’ as part of the address, I’m sure it’ll get to him.”

“Ah,” said Ponter. “Good. Then our business here is finished.”