Hybrids

Chapter Ten

There was a very good reason for wanting to establish a new interuniversal portal at United Nations headquarters. The existing portal was located two kilometers underground, 1.2 kilometers horizontally from the nearest elevator on the Gliksin side, and three kilometers from the nearest elevator on the Barast side.

It would take Mary and Ponter a couple of hours to get from the surface in her world to the surface in his. They began by donning hardhats and safety boots, and riding down the mining elevator at Inco’s Creighton Mine. The hardhats had built-in lamps, and hearing-protection cups that could be swung over the ears if needed.

Mary had brought two suitcases, and Ponter was effortlessly carrying them for her, one in each hand.

Five miners rode most of the way down with them, getting off one level above where Mary and Ponter were to exit. That was just fine by Mary; she was always uncomfortable in this lift. It reminded her of the awkward journey she’d had in it once before with Ponter, explaining why, back then, despite his obvious attraction to her, and hers to him, she’d been unable to respond to his touch.

Once on the 6800-foot level, they began the long trudge out to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory site. Mary was never a great one for exercise, but it was actually even worse for Ponter, since the temperature this far below the Earth’s surface was a constant forty-one degrees Celsius, much too warm for him.

“I will be glad to be back home,” said Ponter. “Back to air I can breathe!”

Mary knew he wasn’t referring to the oppressive air here in the mine. Rather, he was looking forward to being in a world that didn’t burn fossil fuels, the smell of which had assaulted his massive nose most places he went here, although Reuben’s place, out in the country, had been quite tolerable, he’d said.

Mary was reminded of the theme song to one of her favorite shows when she was a kid:

She hoped she would fit in on Ponter’s world better than Lisa Douglas had in Hooterville. But it was more than just leaving the hustle and bustle of a world of six billion souls for one of just a hundred and eighty-five million…million people; you couldn’t use the word “souls” when tallying Barasts, since they didn’t believe they had any.

The day before they’d left Rochester, Ponter had been interviewed on the radio; the Neanderthals were very much in demand as guests wherever they happened to be. Mary had listened with interest as Bob Smith had questioned Ponter about Neanderthal beliefs on WXXI, the local PBS station. Smith had spent a fair bit of time on the Neanderthal practice of sterilizing criminals. As they walked down the long muddy tunnel, the topic of the interview came up.

“Yes,” said Mary, in response to Ponter’s question, “you were fine, but…”

“But what?”

“Well, those things you said—about sterilizing people. I…”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, Ponter, but I really can’t condone that.”

Ponter looked at her. He was wearing a special orange hardhat that the nickel mine had put together for him, shaped to accommodate his Neanderthal head. “Why not?”

“It’s…it’s inhuman. And I guess I am using that word advisedly. It’s just not a suitable thing for human beings to do.”

Ponter was quiet for a time, looking at the drift’s walls, which were covered with wire mesh to prevent rock bursts. “I know there are many on this version of Earth who do not believe in evolution,” he said at last, “but those who do must understand that human evolution has—how would you say it?—ground to a halt. Since medical techniques allow almost every human to live to reproductive age, there is no longer any…any…I am not sure what your phrase is.”

“‘Natural selection,’ ” said Mary. “Sure, I understand that; without selective survival of genes, no evolution can occur.”

“Exactly,” said Ponter. “And yet evolution made us what we are, turning the four basic, original lifeforms into the complex, diverse varieties exhibited today.”

Mary looked over at Ponter. “The four original lifeforms?”

He blinked. “Yes, of course.”

“What four?” said Mary, thinking perhaps she’d at last detected a hint of creationism underlying Ponter’s worldview. Could it be Neander-Adam, Neander-Eve, Neander-Adam’s man-mate, and Neander-Eve’s woman-mate?

“The original plant, animal, fungi, and—I do not know your name—the group that includes slime molds and some algae.”

“Protists or protoctists,” said Mary, “depending on who you ask.”

“Yes. Well, each emerged separately from the primordial prebiologic world.”

“You have proof of that?” said Mary. “We generally hold that life only emerged once on this world, some four billion years ago.”

“But the four types of life are so different…” said Ponter. And then he shrugged. “Well, you are the geneticist, notI. The point of this trip is to meet our experts in such matters, so you should ask one of them about this. One of you—I do not know which—has a lot to learn from the other.”

Mary never ceased to be amazed at how Neanderthal science and her own brand of the stuff differed on so many fundamental matters. But she didn’t want to lose track of the more important issue that—

The more important issue. Interesting, thought Mary, that she considered a moral conundrum more important than a basic scientific truth. “We were talking about the end of evolution. You’re saying that your kind continues to evolve because it consciously weeds out bad genes.”

“‘Weeds out’?” repeated Ponter, frowning. “Ah—an agricultural metaphor. I think I understand. Yes, you are right. We continue to improve our gene pool by getting rid of undesirable traits.”

Mary stepped over a large muddy puddle. “I could almost buy that—but you do it not just by sterilizing criminals, but also their close relatives, too.”

“Of course. Otherwise, the genes might persist.”

Mary shook her head. “And I just can’t abide that.” Hak bleeped. “Abide, ” repeated Mary. “Tolerate. Stand.”

“Why not?”

“Because…because it’s wrong. Individuals have rights.”

“Of course they do,” said Ponter, “but so do species. We are protecting and improving the Barast species.”

Mary tried not to shudder, but Ponter must have detected it regardless. “You react negatively to what I just said.”

“Well,” said Mary, “it’s just that so often in our past, people here have made the same claim. Back in the 1940s, Adolf Hitler set out to purge our gene pool of Jews.”

Ponter tipped his head slightly, perhaps listening to Hak remind him through his cochlear implants of who the Jews were. Mary imagined the little computer saying, “You know, the ones who weren’t gullible enough to believe in that Jesus story.”

“Why did he want to do that?” asked Ponter.

“Because he hated the Jews, pure and simple,” said Mary. “Don’t you see? Giving someone the power to decide who lives and who dies, or who breeds and who doesn’t, is just playing God.”

“‘Playing God,’” repeated Ponter, as if the phrase was appealingly oddball. “Obviously, such a notion would never occur to us.”

“But the potential for corruption, for unfairness…”

Ponter spread his arms. “And yet you kill certain criminals.”

“We don’t,” said Mary. “That is, Canadians don’t. But Americans do, in some states.”

“So I have learned,” said Ponter. “And, more than that, I have learned there is a racial component to this.” He looked at Mary. “Your various races intrigue me, you know. My people are northern-adapted, so we tend to stay in approximately the same latitudes, no matter where we are in terms of longitude, which I guess is why we all look pretty much alike. Am I correct in understanding that darker skin is an adaptation to more equatorial climes?”

Mary nodded.

“And the—what do you call them? On the eyes of those such as Paul Kiriyama?”

It took a moment for Mary to remember who Paul Kiriyama was—the grad student who, along with Louise Benoît, had saved Ponter from drowning in the heavy-water tank up ahead at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Then it took another moment for her to remember the name for what Ponter was referring to. “You mean the skin that covers part of Asian eyes? Epicanthic folds.”

“Yes. Epicanthic folds. I presume these are to help shield the eyes from glare, but my people have browridges that accomplish much the same thing, so, again, it is a trait we never developed.”

Mary nodded slowly, more to herself than to Ponter. “There’s been a lot of speculation, you know, on the Internet and in newspapers, about what happened to your other races. People assume that—well, that with your belief in purging the gene pool, that you wiped them out.”

“There never were any other races. Although we do have some scientists in what you call Africa and Central America, they are hardly permanent residents there.” He raised a hand. “And without races, we obviously have never had racial discrimination. But you do: here, racial characteristics correlate with the likelihood of execution for serious crimes, is that not correct?”

“Blacks are more frequently sentenced to death than are whites, yes.” Mary decided not to add, Especially when they kill a white.

“Perhaps because we never had such divisions, the idea of sterilizing a segment of humanity on an arbitrary basis never occurred to us.”

A couple of miners were approaching them, going the other way. They openly stared at Ponter—although the sight of a woman down here was probably almost as rare, Mary thought. Once they had passed, Mary continued. “But surely, even without visible races, there must have been a desire to favor those who are closely related to you over those who are not. That’s kin selection, and it exists throughout the animal kingdom. I can’t imagine that Neanderthals are exempt.”

“Exempt? Perhaps not. But remember that our family relations are more…elaborate, shall we say, than yours, or, for that matter, than most other animals. We have a never-ending family chain of man-mates and woman-mates, and because of our system of Two becoming One only temporarily, we do not have the difficulty in determining paternity that concerns your kind so much.” He paused, then smiled. “Anyway, as to the price of tea in China, my people find your notion of execution or decades of imprisonment to be more cruel than our sterilization and judicial scrutiny.”

It took Mary a moment to remember what “judicial scrutiny” was: the process of viewing the transmissions made by a Companion implant, so that everything an individual said and did could be monitored as it happened. “I don’t know,” said Mary. “I mean, like I said in the car, I practice birth control, which is something that my religion forbids, so I can’t claim that I’m morally opposed to anything that might interfere with conception. But…but to prevent innocent people from reproducing seems wrong.”

“You would accept the sterilization of the actual perpetrator, but not his or her siblings, parents, and offspring, as an alternative to execution or imprisonment?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. Under certain circumstances, maybe. If the convicted person so chose.”

Ponter’s golden eyes went wide. “You would let the guilty party choose its punishment?”

Mary felt her heart flutter. Was the choice of “its” Hak’s attempt to render the gender-neutral personal pronoun that existed in the Barast language but not in English, or was it Ponter again dehumanizing a criminal? “Under many circumstances, I would give the criminal a choice of a range of appropriate punishments, yes,” she said, thinking back to Father Caldicott giving her a choice of penances when she’d made her last confession.

“But certainly in some cases,” said Ponter, “only one punishment is suitable. For instance, in…”

Ponter stopped cold. “What?” said Mary.

“No, nothing.”

Mary frowned. “You’re talking about rape.”

Ponter was silent for a long time, looking down at the muddy tunnel floor as he walked along. At first, Mary thought she’d offended him by suggesting he’d be so insensitive as to bring up that uncomfortable topic again, but his next words, when he finally did speak, startled her even more. “Actually,” he said, “I am not just talking about rape in general.” He looked at her, then back at the ground, a mishmash of boot prints illuminated by the beam from the headlight on his hardhat. “I am talking about your rape.”

Mary could feel her heart pounding. “What do you mean?”

“I—it is our way, among our people, not to have secrets between partners, and yet…”

“Yes?”

He turned around and looked back down the drift, making sure they were alone. “There is something I have not told you—something I have not told anyone, except…”

“Except who? Adikor?”

But Ponter shook his head. “No. No, he does not know of this, either. The one person who does know is a male of my kind, a man named Jurard Selgan.”

Mary frowned. “I don’t remember you ever mentioning that name before.”

“I have not,” said Ponter. “He…he is a personality sculptor.”

“A what?” said Mary.

“A—he works with those who wish to modify their…their mental state.”

“You mean a psychiatrist?”

Ponter tipped his head, clearly listening to Hak speak to him through his cochlear implants. The Companion was no doubt breaking the term Mary had presented into its etymological root; ironically, “psyche” was the closest approximation to “soul” the Neanderthals had. At last Ponter nodded. “A comparable specialist, yes.”

Mary’s spine stiffened even as she walked along. “You’ve been seeing a psychiatrist? About my rape?” She’d thought he’d understood, damn it all. Yes, Homo sapiens males were notorious for looking at their spouses differently after they’d been raped, wondering if it had somehow been the woman’s fault, if she’d somehow secretly wanted it—

But Ponter…

Ponter was supposed to understand!

They marched on in silence for a while, their helmet beams lighting the way.

Reflecting on it, Ponter had seemed desperate to know the details of Mary’s rape. At the police station, Ponter had grabbed the sealed evidence bag containing specimens from Qaiser Remtulla’s rape, ripped it open, and inhaled the scent within, identifying one of Mary’s colleagues, Cornelius Ruskin, as the perpetrator.

Mary looked over at Ponter, a dark, hulking form against the rock wall. “It wasn’t my fault,” said Mary.

“What?” said Ponter. “No, I know that.”

“I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for it.”

“Yes, yes, I do understand that.”

“Then why are you seeing this—this ‘personality sculptor’?”

“I am not seeing him anymore. It is just that—”

Ponter stopped, and Mary looked over. He had his head tilted, listening to Hak, and after a moment, he made the smallest of nods, a signal intended for the Companion, not for her.

“It’s just what? ” said Mary.

“Nothing,” said Ponter. “I am sorry I brought the topic up.”

So am I, thought Mary as they continued on through the darkness.