Hybrids

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Inappropriate!” snapped Mary. But then she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “No, you’re right. I understand that-intellectually, at least. And I’m trying to come to terms with it emotionally.”

  “For what it is worth, Adikor is very fond of you, Mare, and he wishes you nothing but happiness.” He paused. “Surely you wish him the same, no?”

  Mary said nothing. The sun was low on the horizon. The car sped on.

  “Mare? Surely you wish Adikor happiness, do you not?”

  “What?” she replied. “Oh, of course. Of course I do.”

  Chapter Five

  “Four decades ago, my predecessor in the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy, said, ‘Now is the time to take longer strides-time for a great new American enterprise.’ I was just a kid in a Montgomery ghetto then, but I remember vividly how those words made my spine tingle...”

  Mary and Ponter pulled into Reuben Montego’s driveway just before 7:00P.M. Louise and Reuben both drove Ford Explorers-clear evidence, Mary thought with a grin, that they were meant for each other. Louise’s was black and Reuben’s was maroon. Mary parked her car, and she and Ponter headed for the front door. Mary had to pass Louise’s car; she thought about feeling the hood, but had no doubt it had long since cooled off.

  Reuben had a couple of acres of land in Lively, a small town outside of Sudbury. Mary quite liked his house, which was two stories tall, large, and modern. She rang the doorbell, and a moment later Reuben appeared, with Louise standing behind him.

  “Mary!” exclaimed Reuben, gathering Mary into a hug. “And Ponter!” he said, once he’d released Mary, hugging him as well.

  Reuben Montego was trim, thirty-five, and black, with a shaved head. He was wearing a sweat suit with the Toronto Blue Jays logo across its chest.

  “Come in, come in,” said Reuben, ushering them out of the cool evening air into his home. Mary removed her shoes, but Ponter couldn’t-because he wasn’t wearing any. He had on Neanderthal pants, which flared out at the bottoms into built-in footwear.

  “It is a quarantine reunion!” declared Ponter, appraising their little group. And indeed it was: the four of them had been locked in together for four days by the order of Health Canada when Ponter had fallen ill during his first visit.

  “Indeed it is, my friend,” said Reuben, acknowledging Ponter’s comment. Mary looked around; she very much liked the furnishings-a smart mixture of Caribbean and Canadian, with built-in bookcases and dark wood everywhere. Reuben himself was a bit of a slob, but his ex-wife had obviously had great taste.

  Mary found herself immediately relaxing in this place. Of course, it didn’t hurt that this was where she’d begun to fall in love with Ponter, or that, indeed, this had become her refuge, safely locked in, with RCMP officers outside, just two days after she’d been raped by Cornelius Ruskin on the campus of Toronto’s York University.

  “It’s a bit late in the season for it,” said Reuben, “but I thought we’d try a barbecue.”

  “Yes, please!” said Ponter, most enthusiastically.

  Reuben laughed. “All right, then. Let me get to it.”

  Louise Benoît was a vegetarian, but she didn’t mind eating with those who were enjoying meat-which was a good thing, because Ponterreally enjoyed meat. Reuben had put three giant slabs of beef on the grill, while Louise had busied herself making a salad. Reuben kept coming in from the backyard, working with Louise on getting everything set. Mary watched them puttering about the kitchen, working together, touching each other affectionately now and again. The early days of Mary’s marriage to Colm had been like that; later, it had seemed as though they were always in each other’s way.

  Mary and Ponter had offered to help, but Reuben had said none was necessary, and soon enough dinner was on the table, and the four of them sat down to eat. It stunned Mary that she’d known these people-three of the most important people in her life-for only three months. When worlds collide, things changefast .

  Mary and Reuben were eating their steaks with knives and forks. Ponter was wearing recyclable dining gloves he’d brought with him, grasping his hunk of meat and tearing chunks off with his teeth.

  “It’s been an amazing few months,” said Reuben, perhaps thinking the same thing Mary had been. “For all of us.”

  Indeed it had been. Ponter Boddit had accidentally been transferred to this version of reality when a quantum-computing experiment he’d been performing went awry. Back on his version of Earth, Ponter’s man-mate, Adikor Huld, had been accused of murdering him and then disposing of the body. Adikor, plus Ponter’s elder daughter, Jasmel Ket, had managed to re-establish the interuniversal portal long enough to bring Ponter home-and to exonerate Adikor in the process.

  Once back home, Ponter had convinced the High Gray Council to let him and Adikor try to open a permanent portal, which they quickly succeeded in doing.

  Meanwhile, the magnetic field on this version of Earth had started acting up, apparently as a prelude to a pole reversal. The Neanderthal Earth had recently undergone its own reversal-and the whole thing had happened extraordinarily fast, with their field collapse beginning just twenty-five years ago and the flipping and re-establishing of the field completed just fifteen years later.

  Mary, still haunted by her rape, left York University to join Jock Krieger’s newly formed Synergy Group. But on a return trip to Toronto, Ponter identified Mary’s rapist; Cornelius Ruskin, it turned out, had also raped Qaiser Remtulla, Mary’s department head at York.

  “An amazing few months indeed,” said Mary. She smiled at Reuben and then at Louise; they weresuch a good-looking couple. Ponter was seated next to her; she would have taken his hand if it weren’t wrapped in a bloody glove. But Reuben and Louise had no such impediment; Reuben squeezed Louise’s hand, and beamed at her, the love obvious on his face.

  The four of them chatted animatedly, first over their main courses, then over a dessert of fruit cocktail, and finally over coffee (for the threeHomo sapiens ) and Coca-Cola (for Ponter). Mary was enjoying every minute of it-but also feeling a little sadness, regretting that evenings like these, having dinner with Ponter and their friends, would be few and far between; Ponter’s culture just didn’t work that way.

  “Oh, by the way,” said Reuben, taking a sip of his coffee, “a friend of mine at Laurentian has been bugging me to introduce you to her.” Laurentian University, in Sudbury, was where Mary had done her studies on Ponter’s DNA, proving he was a Neanderthal.

  Ponter lifted his one continuous eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Her name’s Veronica Shannon, and she’s a postdoc in the Neuroscience Research Group there.”

  Ponter clearly expected Reuben to say more, but when he didn’t, he prodded with the Neanderthal word for yes. “Ka?”

  “Sorry,” said Reuben. “I’m just not quite sure how to phrase all this. I don’t suppose you know who Michael Persinger is?”

  “I do,” said Louise. “I read the article about him inSaturday Night .”

  Reuben nodded. “Yeah, there was a cover story about him there. And he’s also been written up inWired andThe Skeptical Inquirer andMaclean’s andScientific American andDiscover .”

  “Who is he?” asked Ponter.

  Reuben put down his fork. “Persinger’s an American draft dodger-from the good old days when the cross-border brain drain flowed in the other direction. He’s been at Laurentian for years, and invented a device there that can induce religious experiences in people, through magnetic stimulation of their brains.”

  “Oh,that guy,” said Mary, rolling her eyes.

  “You sound dubious,” said Reuben.

  “Iam dubious,” said Mary. “What a load of hooey.”

  “I’ve done it myself,” said Reuben. “Not with Persinger-but with my friend Veronica, who has developed a second-generation system, based on Persinger’s research.”

  “And did you see God?” asked Mary derisively.

  “You might say that, yes. They’ve really got somet
hing there.” He looked at Ponter. “And that’s where you come in, big fella. Veronica wants to try her equipment on you.”

  “Why?” asked Ponter.

  “Why?” repeated Reuben, as if the answer were obvious. “Because our world is abuzz over this notion that your people never developed religion. Not just that you had it and then outgrew it, but that in your whole history no one ever even conceived of the notions of God or an afterlife.”

  “Such notions would-how do you phrase it?-‘fly in the face’ of observed reality,” said Ponter. He looked over at Mary. “Forgive me, Mare. I know you believe in these things, but...”

  Mary nodded. “But you don’t.”

  “Well,” continued Reuben, “Persinger’s group believes they’ve found the neurological reason whyHomo sapiens have religious beliefs. So, my friend Veronica wants to see if she can induce a religious experience in Neanderthals. If she can, then they’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do, since you guys don’t have religious thoughts. But Veronica suspects that the technique that works on us won’t work on you. She thinks your brains must be wired differently on some fundamental level.”

  “A fascinating premise,” said Ponter. “Is there any danger in the procedure?”

  Reuben shook his head. “None at all. In fact, I had to certify that.” He smiled. “The big problem with most psychological studies is that all the guinea pigs are psych under-grads-people who have self-selected to study psychology. We know an enormous amount about the brains of such people, who may or may not be typical, but very little about the brains of the general population. I first met Veronica last year; she approached me about getting some of the miners to be test subjects-a completely different demographic than she usually gets to work with.” Reuben was the mine-site physician at Inco’s Creighton nickel mine, where the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory was located. “She was offering the miners a few bucks, but Inco wanted me to okay the procedure before letting them do it. I read up on Persinger’s work, looked at Veronica’s modifications, and underwent the procedure myself. The magnetic fields are minuscule compared to those in MRIs, and I routinely recommendthose for my patients. It’s completely safe.”

  “So she will pay me a few bucks?” asked Ponter.

  Reuben looked shocked.

  “Hey, a fellow has to eat,” said Ponter. But he couldn’t keep up the facade; a giant grin crossed his face. “No, no, you are right, Reuben, I do not care about compensation.” He looked at Mary. “What Ido care about is understanding this aspect of you, Mare-this thing that is so important a part of your life but that I find incomprehensible.”

  “If you want to learn more about my religion, come to Mass with me,” said Mary.

  “Gladly,” said Ponter. “But I would also like to meet this friend of Reuben.”

  “We have to get over to your world,” said Mary, sounding a bit petulant. “Two will soon be One.”

  Ponter nodded. “Oh, indeed-and we don’t want to miss a moment of that.” He looked at Reuben. “Your friend would need to make time for us tomorrow. Can she do that?”

  “I’ll give her a call right now,” said Reuben, getting up. “I’m sure she’ll move heaven and Earth to accommodate you.”

  Chapter Six

  “Jack Kennedy was right: it was time then for us to take longer strides. And it’s that time again. For the greatest strength weHomo sapienshave always had, since the dawn of our consciousness 40,000 years ago, is our desire to go places, to make journeys, to see what’s beyond the next hill, to expand our territories, and-if I may borrow a phrase coined just four years after JFK’s speech-to boldly go where no man has gone before...”

  Ponter and Mary had spent the night at Reuben’s place, sleeping together on the foldout couch. Early the next morning, they headed over to the small campus of Laurentian University and found room C002B, one of the labs used by the tiny Neuroscience Research Group.

  Veronica Shannon turned out to be a skinny white woman in her late twenties with red hair and a nose that until she’d met female Neanderthals, Mary would have called large. She was wearing a white lab coat. “Thank you for coming, Dr. Boddit,” she said, pumping Ponter’s hand. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  He smiled. “You may call me Ponter. And it is my pleasure. I am intrigued by your research.”

  “And Mary-may I call you Mary?-it issuch a treat to meet you!” She shook Mary’s hand. “I was so sorry I didn’t have a chance when you were on the campus earlier, but I was back home in Halifax for the summer.” She smiled, then looked away, seeming almost embarrassed to go on. “You’re a bit of a hero of mine,” she said.

  Mary blinked. “Me?”

  “There aren’t that many female Canadian scientists who really make it big, but you have. Even before Ponter came along, you’d really put us on the map. The work you did with ancient DNA! First-rate! Absolutely first-rate! Who says that Canadian women can’t take the world by storm?”

  “Um, thank you.”

  “You’ve been quite the role model for me. You, Julie Payette, Roberta Bondar...”

  Mary had never thought of herself in that august company-Payette and Bondar were Canadian astronauts. But, then again, shehad gotten to another world before either of them...

  “Thank you,” said Mary again. “Umm, we really don’t have that much time...”

  Veronica blushed a bit. “Sorry; you’re right. Let me explain the procedure. The work I’m doing is based on research begun here at Laurentian in the 1990s by Michael Persinger. I can’t take credit for the fundamental idea-but science is all about replication, and my job is verifying his findings.”

  Mary looked around the lab, which had the usual university mix of shiny new equipment, battered old equipment, and beat-up wooden furniture. Veronica went on. “Now, Persinger had about an 80 percent success rate. My equipment is second-generation, a modification of what he developed, and I’m getting about 94 percent.”

  “It seems a bit of a coincidence that this research is going on so close to the portal between worlds,” said Mary.

  But Veronica shook her head. “Oh, no, Mary, not really! We’re all here because of the same thing-the nickel that was deposited when that asteroid hit the Earth here two billion years ago. See, originally Persinger was interested in the UFO phenomenon: how come flying saucers are most frequently seen by guys named Clete and Bubba out in the back forty.”

  “Well,” said Mary, “you can get beer anywhere.”

  Veronica laughed more than even Mary thought the joke deserved. “That’s true-but Persinger decided to take the question at face value. Not that he, or I, believe in flying saucers, but thereis a real psychological phenomenon that makes peoplethink they’ve seen such things, and Persinger got to wondering why that phenomenon would be triggered outdoors, especially in isolated locations. Laurentian does a lot of mining studies, of course, and when Persinger started looking for possible causes for the out-in-the-countryside UFO experience, the mining engineers here suggested piezoelectric discharges.”

  Ponter’s Companion, Hak, had bleeped a couple of times, indicating he hadn’t understood some words, but neither Ponter nor Mary had interrupted Veronica, who was clearly on a roll. Apparently, though, she didn’t expect Ponter to know the term “piezoelectric,” and so explained it of her own accord: “Piezoelectricity is the generation of electricity in rock crystals that are being deformed or are otherwise under stress. You get piezoelectric discharges, for instance, when a pickup truck drives over rocky ground out in the country-the classic UFO-sighting scenario. Persinger managed to reliably replicate that sort of electromagnetic effect in the lab, and lo and behold, he could make just about anyone think they’d seen an alien.”

  “An alien?” repeated Mary. “But you’d mentioned God.”

  “To-may-to, to-mah-to,” said Veronica, grinning a very toothy grin. “It’s all the same thing.”

  “How?”

  Veronica pulled a book off her shelf:Why God Won’t Go Away: The Biolog
ical Basis for Belief . “Newberg and d’Aquili, the authors of this book, did brain scans of eight Tibetan Buddhists meditating and of a bunch of Franciscan nuns praying. Naturally, those people showed increased activity in the areas of the brain associated with concentration. But they also showeddecreased activity in the parietal lobe.” She tapped the side of her skull, indicating the lobe’s location. “The left-hemisphere part of the parietal lobe helps define your own body image, while the right-hemisphere part helps orient you in three-dimensional space. So, collectively, those two parts are responsible for defining the boundary between where your body ends and things outside your body begin. With the parietal lobe taking a coffee break, the natural feeling is exactly what the monks report: a loss of the sense of self, and a feeling of being at one with the universe.”

  Mary nodded. “I saw the cover story about that inTime .”

  Veronica politely shook her head. “It wasNewsweek , actually. Anyway, their work combines with Persinger’s and mine. They found that the limbic system lights up during religious experiences-and it’s the limbic system that tags things as significant. You can show a parent a hundred babies, but they’ll only react profoundly to the sight of theirown baby. That’s because the limbic system has tagged that particular visual input as important. Well, with the limbic system afire during religious experiences, the whole thing gets tagged as overwhelmingly important.

  “That’s why religious experiences never sound good in the telling: it’s just like me telling you my boyfriend is the best-looking guy in the world, and you going, yeah, sure. So I open my purse and show you a picture of him, and I think you’ll be convinced, right? You’ll go, wow, heis a hunk. But if I did that, you won’t have that response. He’s handsome beyond compareto me because my limbic system has tagged his appearance as having special significance for me. But there’s no way I can express that to you via words or pictures. Same thing with religious experiences: no matter how much someone tells you about their own one, about how life-changing and momentous it was, you just can’t get that same feeling about it.”