Hybrids np-3

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Bandra was standing in front of the washbasin, hunched over, leaning into the square mirror above the sink.

  “Excuse me,” said Mary. “I just need to—oh, my! Bandra, are you okay?”

  It had taken a moment for Mary to see that there were splatters of blood on the polished granite washbasin; the red drops were difficult to make out against the pink stone.

  Bandra didn’t turn around. Indeed, she seemed to be making an effort to hide her face. Mary loomed in.

  “Bandra, what is it?” Mary reached up and took hold of Bandra’s shoulder. Had Bandra really wanted to, she could have stopped Mary from turning her around—she was certainly strong enough. But although she resisted a bit at first, she did allow Mary to turn her.

  Mary felt herself sucking in air. The left side of Bandra’s face was bruised horribly, a yellow rim around a black-and-blue area perhaps ten centimeters across running from just above her browridge, down her wide, angled cheek to the corner of her mouth. There had been a central scab, half the diameter of the bruise, but Bandra had picked much of it away; that’s where the fresh blood was coming from.

  “My God,” Mary said. “What happened to you?” Mary found a cloth—square, coarse—dipped it into the water, and helped Bandra clean the wound.

  Tears were running down Bandra’s face now, falling from the deep wells of her eyes, detouring around her massive nose, flowing over her chinless jaw, and dropping onto the granite washbasin, diluting the blood there. “I—I never should have let you come here,” said Bandra softly.

  “Me?” said Mary. “What did I do?”

  But Bandra seemed lost in her own thoughts. “It’s not so bad,” she said, looking in the mirror.

  Mary set down the washcloth and put one hand on each of Bandra’s broad shoulders. “Bandra, what happened?”

  “I was trying to remove the scab,” said Bandra softly. “I thought maybe I could cover the bruise, and you wouldn’t notice, but…” She sniffled, and when a Neanderthal sniffled it was a loud, raucous sound.

  “Who did this to you?” asked Mary.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Bandra.

  “Of course it matters!” said Mary. “Who was it?”

  Bandra rallied a little strength. “I took you into my home, Mare. You know we Barasts require very little privacy—but in this matter, I must insist upon it.”

  Mary felt nauseous. “Bandra, I can’t stand by while you’re being hurt.”

  Bandra picked up the washcloth and dabbed it against the side of her face a few times to see if the bleeding had stopped. It had, and she put the cloth back down. Mary led her out into the living room and got her to sit down on the couch. Mary sat next to her, took both of Bandra’s large hands, and looked into her wheat-colored eyes. “Take your time,” said Mary, “but you must tell me what happened.”

  Bandra looked away. “It had been three months since he’d done it, so I thought he wouldn’t do it this time. I thought maybe…”

  “Bandra, who hurt you?”

  Bandra’s voice was almost inaudible, but Christine repeated the word loud enough for Mary to hear. “Harb.”

  “Harb?” said Mary, startled. “Your man-mate?”

  Bandra moved her head up and down a few millimeters.

  “My…God,” said Mary. She took a deep breath, then nodded, as much to herself as to Bandra. “All right,” she said. “This is what we’re going to do: we’ll go to the authorities and report him.”

  “Tant,” said Bandra. No.

  “Yes,” said Mary firmly. “This sort of thing happens on my world, too. But you don’t have to put up with it. We can get you help.”

  “Tant! ” said Bandra, more firmly.

  “I know it will be difficult,” said Mary, “but we’ll go to the authorities together. I’ll be with you every step of the way. We’ll put an end to this.” She gestured at Bandra’s Companion. “There has to be a recording of what he did at the alibi archives, right? He can’t possibly get away with it.”

  “I will not make an accusation against him. Without a victim’s accusation, no crime has been committed. That’s the law.”

  “I know you think you love him, but you don’t have to stand for this. No woman does.”

  “I don’t love him,” said Bandra. “I hate him. ”

  “All right, then,” said Mary. “Let’s do something about it. Come on, we’ll get you cleaned up and into some fresh clothes, and we’ll go see an adjudicator.”

  “Tant! ” said Bandra, slapping the flat of her hand against the table in front of her. It made such a loud sound, Mary thought the table was going to splinter into kindling. “Tant! ” Bandra said again. But her tone wasn’t one of fear; rather, it was filled with conviction.

  “But why not? Bandra, if you think it’s your duty to put up with—”

  “You know nothing of our world,” said Bandra. “Nothing. I can’t go to an adjudicator with this.”

  “Why not? Surely assault is a crime here, no?”

  “Of course,” said Bandra.

  “Even between those who are bonded, no?”

  Bandra nodded.

  “Then why not?”

  “Because of our children! ” snapped Bandra. “Because of Hapnar and Dranna.”

  “What about them?” asked Mary. “Will Harb go after them, too? Was—was he an abusive father?”

  “You see!” crowed Bandra. “You understand nothing.”

  “Then make me understand, Bandra. Make me understand, or I will go to the adjudicator myself.”

  “What is it to you?” asked Bandra.

  Mary was taken aback by the question. Surely it was every woman’s business. Surely…

  And then it hit her, like a meteor crashing from above. She hadn’t reported her own rape, and her department head, Qaiser Remtulla, had gone on to be Cornelius Ruskin’s next victim. She wanted to make up for that somehow, wanted to never again feel guilty about letting a crime against a woman go unreported.

  “I’m just trying to help,” said Mary. “I care about you.”

  “If you care, you will forget you ever saw me like this.”

  “But—”

  “You must promise! You must promise me.”

  “But why, Bandra? You can’t let this go on.”

  “I have to let this go on!” She clenched her massive fists and closed her eyes. “I have to let this go on.”

  “Why? For God’s sake, Bandra…”

  “It has nothing to do with your silly God,” said Bandra. “It has to do with reality.”

  “What reality?”

  Bandra looked away again, took a deep breath, then let it out. “The reality of our laws,” she said at last.

  “What do you mean? Won’t they punish him for something like this?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Bandra bitterly. “Yes, indeed.”

  “Well, then?”

  “Do you know what the punishment will be?” asked Bandra. “You are involved with Ponter Boddit. What punishment was threatened against his man-mate Adikor when Adikor was falsely accused of murdering Ponter?”

  “They would have sterilized Adikor,” said Mary. “But Adikor didn’t deserve that, because he didn’t do anything. But Harb—”

  “Do you think I care what happens to him?” said Bandra. “But they won’t just sterilize Harb. Violence can’t be tolerated in the gene pool. They will also sterilize everyone who shares fifty percent of his genetic material.”

  “Oh, Christ,” said Mary softly. “Your daughters…”

  “Exactly! Generation 149 will be conceived soon. My Hapnar will conceive her second child then, and my Dranna will conceive her first. But if I report Harb’s behavior…”

  Mary felt like she’d been hit in the stomach. If Bandra reported Harb’s behavior, her daughters would be sterilized, as, she supposed, would any siblings Harb had, and his parents, if they were still alive…although she supposed Harb’s mother might be spared, since she was presumably postmenopausal. “I
didn’t think Neanderthal men were like that,” she said softly. “I am so sorry, Bandra.”

  Bandra lifted her massive shoulders a bit. “I’ve carried this burden for a long time. I’m used to it. And…”

  “Yes?”

  “And I thought it was over. He hadn’t hit me since my woman-mate left. But…”

  “They never stop,” said Mary. “Not for good.” She could taste acid at the back of her throat. “There must be something you can do.” She paused, then: “Surely you can defend yourself. Surely that is legal. You could…”

  “What?”

  Mary looked at the moss-covered floor. “A Neanderthal can kill another Neanderthal with one well-placed punch.”

  “Yes, indeed!” said Bandra. “Yes, indeed. So you see, he must love me—for if he did not, I would be dead.”

  “Hitting is no way to show love,” said Mary, “but hitting back—hard—may be your only choice.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Bandra. “If the decision was taken that I hadn’t needed to kill him, a violence judgment would be brought against me, and again my daughters would suffer, for they share half my genes as well.”

  “A goddamned catch-22,” said Mary. She looked at Bandra. “Do you know that phrase?”

  Bandra nodded. “A situation with no way out. But you’re wrong, Mare. There is a way out. Eventually I, or Harb, will die. Until then…” She lifted her hands, unclenched her fists, and turned her palms up in a gesture of futility.

  “But why don’t you just divorce him, or whatever you call it here? That’s supposed to be easy.”

  “The legalities of what you call divorce are easy, but people still gossip, they still wonder. If I were to dissolve my union with Harb, people would question me and him about it. The truth might come out, and again my daughters would be at risk of sterilization.” She shook her head. “No, no, this way is better.”

  Mary opened her arms and took Bandra into them, holding her, stroking her silver and orange hair.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “It is time, my fellow Homo sapiens, that we go to Mars…”

  This has to be absolutely galling for him, thought Ponter Boddit, who was enjoying every beat of Councilor Bedros’s discomfort.

  After all, it was Bedros who had ordered him and Ambassador Tukana Prat to return from Mare’s version of Earth as a prelude to shutting down the interuniversal portal. But not only had Ponter refused to return, Tukana Prat had convinced ten eminent Neanderthals—including Lonwis Trob—to cross over to the other reality.

  And now Bedros had to greet the Gliksin contingent from that world. Ponter had been on hand down in the quantum-computing chamber as the delegates came through; it wouldn’t do if the closest thing the fractious Gliksins had to a world leader was cut in two by the portal flickering closed as he was walking down the Derkers tube.

  Bedros hadn’t gone down into the depths of the Debral nickel mine today. Instead, he’d waited up on the surface for the amanuensis-high-warrior and the other United Nations officials to come up.

  Which was what they had just done. It had taken two trips in the circular mineshaft elevator to get them all topside, but now they were here. Four silver-clad Exhibitionists were on hand as well, letting the public watch what was unfolding. The dark-skinned United Nations leader had come out of the elevator house first, followed by Ponter, then three men and two women with lighter skin, and then Jock Krieger, the tallest member of the group.

  “Welcome to Jantar,” said Bedros. He’d obviously instructed his Companion not to translate the Barast name for their planet. For their part, the seven Gliksins had no Companions, not even temporary strap-on units. Apparently, there had been much debate about this, but that same bizarre “diplomatic immunity” Ponter had encountered before had led to them being exempted from having everything they said and did recorded at the alibi archives. Actually, if Ponter understood matters correctly, Jock really wasn’t entitled to this special treatment, but nonetheless he also wasn’t wearing a Companion.

  “It is with great hopes for the future that we welcome you here,” continued Bedros. Ponter fought hard to suppress a smirk; Bedros had had to be coached by Tukana Prat—the ambassador who had flouted his authority—in what constituted an appropriate speech by Gliksin standards. He went on for what seemed like daytenths, and the amanuensis-high-warrior responded in kind.

  Jock Krieger must have been a Barast at heart, thought Ponter. While the other Gliksins seemed to be enjoying the pomp, he was clearly ignoring it, looking around at the trees and hills, at every bird that flew by, at the blue sky overhead.

  Finally, the speechmaking was over. Ponter sidled up to Jock, who was wearing a long beige coat tied at the waist by a beige sash, leather gloves, and a brimmed cap; the Gliksin contingent had waited down in the mine while their clothes were decontaminated. “Well, what do you think of our world?”

  Jock shook his head slowly back and forth, and his voice was full of wonder. “It’s beautiful …”

  The Voyeur in Bandra’s house was attached to the living-room wall, its surface gently following the curvature of the round room. The big square was divided into four smaller squares, each showing the perspective of one of the four Exhibitionists on hand at the Debral nickel mine as the delegation from the United Nations emerged. Bandra was in no shape to be seen in public today, and Mary and she stayed home, ostensibly to watch the arrival of other Gliksins on the Voyeur.

  “Oh, look!” said Bandra. “There’s Ponter!”

  Mary had been hoping to catch a glimpse of him—and, unfortunately, that seemed to be all she was going to get. The Exhibitionists weren’t interested in a fellow Barast. Their attention was on the group of Gliksins.

  “So, who is who?” asked Bandra.

  “That man there”—she had the usual Canadian fear of being thought a racist that prevented her from saying “the black man” or “the man with the dark skin,” even though that was the most obvious difference between Kofi Annan and the rest of the group—“is the secretary-general of the United Nations.”

  “Which one?”

  “That one. On the left, there.”

  “The one with brown skin?”

  “Um, yes.”

  “So, he’s your world’s leader?”

  “Well, no. No, not really. But he is the highest official at the UN.”

  “Ah. And who is that tall one?”

  “That’s Jock Krieger. He’s my boss.”

  “He has—he looks…predatory.”

  Mary considered this. She supposed Bandra was right. “A lean and hungry look.”

  “Ooooh!” said Bandra, delighted. “Is that a saying?”

  “It’s a line from a play.”

  “Well, it fits him.” She nodded decisively. “I don’t like his bearing. There is no joy in his expression.” But then Bandra seemed to realize that she might be giving offense. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t speak that way about your friend.”

  “He’s not my friend,” said Mary. She adhered to the rule of thumb that a friend was someone to whose home you had been, or who had been to your home. “We just work together.”

  “And look!” said Bandra. “He’s not wearing a Companion!”

  Mary peered at the screen. “So he isn’t.” She surveyed other parts of the four images. “None of the Gliksins are.”

  “How can that be?”

  Mary frowned. “Diplomatic immunity, I guess. Which means…”

  “Yes?”

  Mary’s heart was pounding. “It usually means a diplomat can travel without having his luggage examined. If I can get the codon writer to Jock, he should be able to take it back to my world without difficulty.”

  “Perfect,” said Bandra. “Oh, look! There’s Ponter again!”

  The flight from Saldak to Donakat Island took two daytenths, which, Ponter knew, was much longer than the comparable journey would have taken in Mare’s world. He spent most of it thinking about Mare and about Vissan’s device
that would let them conceive a baby, but Jock, who was sitting next to Ponter in the wide cabin of the helicopter, interrupted his reverie at one point. “You never developed airplanes?” he said.

  “No,” said Ponter. “I have wondered about that myself. Certainly, many of my people have been fascinated by birds and flight, but I have seen the long—‘landing strips,’ do you call them?”

  Jock nodded.

  “I have seen the long landing strips that your airplanes require. I think only a species that was already used to clearing large tracts of land for farming would have considered it natural to do the same for runways, or even roadways.”

  “I never thought about it that way,” said Jock.

  “Well,” continued Ponter, “we certainly do not have roads the way you do. Most of us are—how would you put it? stay-at-home types. We do not travel much, and we prefer to have food right outside our doors.”

  Jock looked around the helicopter. “Still, this is very comfortable. Lots of room between seats. We tend to cram people into planes—and trains and buses, too, for that matter.”

  “Comfort is not the specific goal,” said Ponter. “Rather, it is to keep other people’s pheromones out of one’s nose. I have found it very difficult flying on your big airplanes, especially with the pressurized cabins. One of the reasons we do not fly nearly as high as you do is so that our cabins do not have to be sealed; we bring in fresh air constantly to avoid the build up of pheromones, and—” Ponter stopped talking, and tipped his head. “Ah, thank you, Hak.” He looked at Jock. “I had asked Hak to let me know when we were passing over the spot that corresponds to Rochester, New York. If you look out the window now…”

  Jock pressed his face up against a square of glass. Ponter moved over and looked through another window. He could see the south shoreline of what he knew Jock called Lake Ontario.

  “It’s just forest,” said Jock, astonished, turning back to Ponter.