Humans

Chapter Thirty-eight

Personality sculptor Selgan regarded Ponter for a time. “You have a flair for the ironic, I see.”

“What do you mean?”

“‘Our business here is finished.’ You told me you committed a crime on the Gliksin world—it is easy enough to guess what it is.”

“Is it? I rather doubt you’ve figured it out.”

Selgan shrugged slightly. “Possibly not. But I have figured out one thing that perhaps has eluded you.”

Ponter sounded irritated. “And what is that?”

“Mare suspected you were going to do something to Ruskin.”

“No, no, she is completely innocent.”

“Is she? A woman of her intelligence—and yet she accepted your flimsy excuse for her to show you where Ruskin dwelled?”

“We had every intention of sending a warning letter! Just as we had discussed. Mare is pure, without sin—that is what her name means! She is named for the mother of her God incarnate, a woman who was conceived immaculately, devoid of original sin. I learned this during my first trip to her world. She would never—”

Selgan held up a hand. “Calm down, Ponter. I didn’t mean to give offense. Please, continue with your narrative…”

“Ponter?” said Hak, through Ponter’s cochlear implants.

Ponter moved his head in a tiny nod of acknowledgment.

“Judging by her breathing patterns, Mare is sleeping deeply. You won’t disturb her if you go now.”

Ponter gently got out of Mary’s bed. The glowing red digits on the night-table clock said 1:14. He walked out of the room, down the small corridor to Mary’s living room. As always, he put on his medical belt, and he checked in one of the pouches to make sure that he had the spare card key Mary had given him; he knew he’d need that to get back into her apartment building.

Ponter then opened Mary’s front door, entered the corridor, headed to the elevator, and rode down to the ground floor—he’d learned that sometimes humans wrote the number one as “1” and sometimes as “L”; it was the latter style that was used on the elevator’s control panel.

Ponter walked through the large lobby, then headed out the set of double doors, exiting into the night.

But how unlike the night of his world it was! There was illumination everywhere: from windows, from electric lights hoisted high on vertical poles, from vehicles going by on the road. It would probably have been easier if it were really dark. Although from a distance he knew he didn’t look that different from a Gliksin—at least, from a Gliksin weightlifter—he would have much preferred to make this journey in total darkness.

“All right, Hak,” Ponter said softly. “Which way?”

“To your left,” Hak replied, still using the cochlear implants. “Mare usually takes a road designed exclusively for motor vehicles, rather than pedestrians, when coming home from York.”

“The Four-oh-Seven,” said Ponter. “That’s what she calls it.”

“In any event, we will have to find another, safer route that parallels it.”

Ponter started jogging along. It was about five thousand armspans from here to his destination—it shouldn’t take more than a daytenth to get there, if he maintained a decent speed.

The night was cool—wonderfully so. And, indeed, although he’d seen many deciduous leaves that had already changed color back in his world, here they all seemed green—yes, green; even in the middle of the night, there was more than enough illumination to discern colors easily.

Ponter had never thought of killing anyone before in his life, but…

But no one had ever so grievously injured someone he cared so much about before, and…

And, even if someone had, in a civilized world that person would have been easily captured and dealt with by the government.

But here! Here, on this mad, mirror Earth…

He had to do more than just send an anonymous paper letter. He had to make sure that Ruskin knew not just that he’d been discovered, but who it was that had discovered him. He had to be made to understand that there would be no possibility of him ever getting away with such a crime again. Only then, Ponter felt sure, could Mare begin to find the peace that had been eluding her. And only then would he know whether there was any truth to Hak’s earlier suggestion that Mare’s current behavior toward him was atypical for her kind.

Ponter was heading down a street lined with two-story residences, many with trees on their anterior lots of grass. As he continued running along, he saw another person—a Gliksin male, with white skin and hardly any head hair—walking toward him. Ponter jogged across the street, so that he wouldn’t pass close to this person, and he continued on, heading west.

“Turn left here,” said Hak. “There doesn’t seem to be a way out at the end of this block of residences.”

Ponter did so and continued his easy run along the perpendicular street. He went only one block, then Hak had him turn right again, resuming his westward course toward York.

A small cat crossed the street in front of Ponter, its tail sticking up in the air. Ponter was amazed that these humans had chosen to domesticate cats, which were useless for hunting and wouldn’t even fetch a stick. But, he thought, to each his own… He continued to jog along, his flat feet slapping against the stony road surface.

A short distance later, Ponter saw a large, black dog, padding toward him. Now, dogs as pets he understood! He’d noted that the Gliksins had many different kinds of dogs—apparently created through selective breeding. Some did seem ill suited for hunting, but he assumed their appearance was pleasing to their owners.

Then again, Ponter had heard paleoanthropologists talking at the meeting in Washington about his own appearance. Apparently his features were what were called “classic Neanderthaloid”—and an extreme form, at that. These scholars were surprised that Ponter’s people hadn’t seen a reduction in browridge prominence and nose size, and even the beginning of that preposterous projection from the front of the mandible.

But since the moment true consciousness had flowered in his people and the universe had therefore split, some half-million months ago, it had been deliberate selection of mates that had led to the retention, and, indeed, the amplification, of the features his people found so beautiful.

“Getting tired yet?” asked Hak.

“No.”

“Good. You’re about halfway there.”

Suddenly Ponter was startled by a loud bark. Another dog—large, brown—was coming toward him, and it did not look happy. Ponter knew he couldn’t outrun the quadruped, so he stopped and turned. “There, there,” he said, in his own language, hoping the dog would understand the soothing tone if not the words. “There’s a good doggy.”

The brown beast continued toward Ponter, still barking. A light had gone on in a window on a nearby dwelling’s second floor.

“That’s a nice doggy,” said Ponter, but he could feel himself tensing—which he knew was a dumb thing to be doing. Just like a Barast, a dog could smell fear on another…

Why the dog was barreling toward him, Ponter couldn’t say. He presumed it didn’t attack everyone who came down this street, but just as he could tell a Gliksin from a Barast by scent, so presumably could this beast—and although it had surely never encountered one of Ponter’s people before, it knew when something foreign had come onto its turf.

Ponter was getting ready to try to seize the dog by the neck when the animal crouched and leapt toward him, and—

A flash of light in the semidarkness—

A sound like wet leather hitting ice—

And the dog yelping in pain.

It had leapt at Ponter with enough force to trigger the shield Goosa Kusk had given him. The dog, startled, dazed, and—as Ponter could smell—bleeding from its muzzle, turned tail and ran away as fast as it had approached. Ponter took a deep, calming breath, then resumed his jog.

“All right,” said Hak, after a time. “Here’s where we have to cross over that roadway, the Four-oh-Seven. Head left, and make your way over that bridge, there. Be careful you aren’t hit by a car.”

Ponter did as Hak had asked, and soon he was on the other side of the highway, jogging south. Way, way off in the distance, he could see the blinking lights atop the CN Tower, down at Toronto’s lakeshore. Mare had told him how magnificent the view from it was, but so far, he’d yet to see the structure except from a great distance.

Ponter crossed another wide road, which had cars zipping along, even at this time of night, every few beats. Within a short time, he found himself on the York University campus, and Hak directed him through it, past buildings and parking lots and through open spaces, to the far side.

And, after several hundred armspans of additional jogging, Ponter found himself standing on a small dirty street, near the building that Ruskin lived in. Ponter bent over and placed his hands on his knees, panting to catch his breath. I guess I am getting old… he thought. A nice wind was blowing directly into his face, cooling him off.

Mare might have awoken by now, and noticed his absence, but she had been, in his brief experience of sharing a bed with her, a very sound sleeper, and it was still most of two daytenths until the sun would come up. He’d be home before then, although not long before, and—

“Reach,” hissed a voice from behind Ponter’s back, and he felt something hard stick into his kidney. And suddenly Ponter realized the flaw in Goosa Kusk’s shield design. Oh, sure, it could deflect a bullet fired from some distance away, but it wouldn’t do anything about one discharged into a person from a gun in direct contact with that person.

Still, this was Canada—and Mare had said there were few handguns here. But the thought that what was sticking into his kidney was only a knife didn’t really comfort Ponter.

Ponter didn’t know what to do. At the moment, in the dim light, from behind, whoever was accosting him presumably didn’t know that Ponter was a Neanderthal. But if he spoke, even softly, in his own tongue so that Hak could translate, that fact would certainly be given away, and—

“What do you want?” said Hak, in English, taking the initiative.

“Your wallet,” said the voice—male, and sounding, Ponter was disheartened to hear, not the least bit nervous.

“I do not have a wallet,” said Hak.

“Too bad for you,” said the Gliksin. “Either I get money—or I get blood.”

Ponter had no doubt he could beat just about any unarmed Gliksin in hand-to-hand combat, but this one clearly had a weapon. Indeed, at that moment, Hak must have realized that Ponter couldn’t see what the weapon was. “He is holding a steel knife,” he said into Ponter’s cochlear implants, “with a serrated blade about 1.2 handspans long, and a handle whose thermal signature suggests that it is polished hardwood.”

Ponter thought about turning rapidly around, hoping that the sight of his Barast face would be enough to startle the Gliksin, but the last thing he wanted was a witness to his having come to Ruskin’s home.

“He keeps shifting from his left foot to his right,” said Hak through the cochlear implants. “Do you hear it?”

Ponter nodded ever so slightly.

“He’s leaning on the left…now on the right…the left. Have you got the rhythm?”

Another slight nod.

“What’s it going to be?” hissed the Gliksin.

“All right,” said Hak, to Ponter. “When I say ‘now,’ bring your right elbow back and up with all your strength. You should hit the man’s solar plexus, and, at the very least he will stagger backward, meaning that your shield should protect you from any incoming knife thrust.” Hak switched to his external speaker. “I really do not have any money”—and, as he said that, Ponter realized Hak had made a mistake, for the “ee” sounds in “really” and “money” were provided by recordings of a Gliksin voice that didn’t match Hak’s own.

“What the—?” said the Gliksin, clearly puzzled by the sound. “Turn around, you piece of—”

“Now!” said Hak into Ponter’s inner ears.

Ponter jerked his elbow back with all his might, and he could feel it connecting with the Gliksin’s stomach. The Gliksin made an ooof! sound as air was forced from his lungs, and Ponter wheeled around to face him.

“Jesus!” said the Gliksin, catching sight of Ponter’s browridged, hairy face. The Gliksin lunged forward, fast enough that Ponter’s shield came up with a flash of light, blocking the knife blade. Ponter shot his own right arm out, and seized the Gliksin by his scrawny neck. The person looked to be about half Ponter’s age. For a brief moment, Ponter thought about closing his fist, crushing the young man’s larynx, but no, he couldn’t do that.

“Drop the knife,” said Ponter. The Gliksin looked down. Ponter did the same, and saw that the knife’s blade was bent from its impact with the shield. Ponter tightened his fingers a bit. The Gliksin’s grip opened as Ponter’s own closed, and the knife fell to the roadway with a clattering sound.

“Now get out of here,” said Ponter, and Hak translated. “Get out of here, and speak to no one of this.”

Ponter let go of the Gliksin, who immediately started gasping for breath. Ponter raised his arm. “Go!” he said. The Gliksin nodded and scuttled off, one hand clutching his belly where Ponter’s elbow had hit it.

Ponter wasted no time. He headed up the cracked-concrete walk leading to the apartment building’s entrance.