Hominids tnp-1

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Adikor had undergone much therapy for his problem with controlling anger. Dear Ponter had recognized it was a sickness, a chemical imbalance, and—to his credit, that wonderful man—had stood by Adikor through his treatment.

  But now … now Bolbay had goaded him, had provoked him, had pushed him over the edge, for all to see.

  “Worthy Adjudicator,” said Adikor, trying—trying, trying!—to sound calm. Should he explain? Could he? Adikor lowered his head. “I apologize for my outburst.”

  Sard still had an astonished quaver in her voice. “Do you have any more evidence supporting your accusation, Daklar Bolbay?”

  Bolbay, clearly having achieved precisely the effect she’d wanted, had reverted to the very picture of reasonableness. “If I may be allowed, Adjudicator, there is one more small thing …”

  Chapter 23

  At the end of the meeting in the Inco conference room, Reuben Montego invited everyone back to his place for another barbecue. Ponter smiled broadly; he’d obviously quite enjoyed the previous night’s meal. Louise accepted the invitation as well, reiterating that, with SNO in ruins, there wasn’t much for her to be doing these days anyway. Mary also accepted—it sounded like fun, and beat another evening alone, staring at the ceiling in her hotel room. But Professor Mah begged off. She needed to get back to Ottawa: she had a 10:00 P.M. appointment at 24 Sussex Drive, where she would brief the Prime Minister.

  The problem now was shaking the media, who, according to the Inco security guards, were waiting just outside the gates of the Creighton mine site. But Reuben and Louise quickly came up with a plan, which they immediately put into action.

  Mary had a rental car now, courtesy of Inco—a red Dodge Neon. (When she’d picked it up, Mary had asked the rental clerk if it ran on noble gas; all she’d gotten was a blank stare in return.)

  Mary left her Neon at the mine, and instead got into the passenger seat of Louise’s black Ford Explorer, sporting a white-and-blue vanity plate that read “D2O”—which, after a moment, Mary realized was the chemical formula for heavy water. Louise got a blanket out of her car’s trunk—sensible drivers in both Ontario and Quebec carried blankets or sleeping bags, in case of winter accidents—and she draped the blanket over Mary.

  Mary found it awfully hot at first, but, fortunately, Louise’s car was air conditioned; few grad students could afford that, but Mary rather suspected Louise had no trouble getting good deals wherever she went.

  Louise drove down the winding gravel road to the mine-site entrance, and Mary, under the blanket, did the best job she could of looking both animate and bulky. After a bit, Louise started to speed, as if trying to get away.

  “We’re just passing the gate now,” said Louise to Mary, who couldn’t see anything. “And it’s working! People are pointing at us and starting to follow.”

  Louise led them all the way back into Sudbury. If everything was going according to plan, Reuben would have waited until the reporters had taken off after the Explorer, then driven Ponter to his house just outside Lively.

  Louise drove to the small apartment building she lived in, parking in the outdoor lot. Mary could hear other cars pulling up near them, some screeching their tires dramatically. Louise got out of the driver’s seat and came over to the passenger door. “Okay,” she said to Mary, after opening the door, “you can get out now.”

  Mary did so, and she could hear other doors slamming shut as their drivers presumably disembarked. Louise shouted “Voilа!” as she helped pull the blanket off Mary, and Mary grinned sheepishly at the reporters.

  “Oh, crap!” said one of the journalists, and “Damn!” said another.

  But a third—there were perhaps a dozen present—was more savvy. “You’re Dr. Vaughan, aren’t you?” she called. “The geneticist?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Well,” demanded the reporter, “is he or isn’t he a Neanderthal?”

  It took forty-five minutes for Mary and Louise to extricate themselves from the journalists, who, although disappointed not to have found Ponter, were delighted to hear the results of Mary’s DNA tests. Finally, though, Mary and Louise made it into Louise’s apartment building and up to her small unit on the third floor. They waited until all the journalists had left the parking lot—clearly visible from Louise’s bedroom window—then Louise got a couple of bottles of wine from her fridge, and she and Mary went back down to her car and drove out to Lively.

  They got to Reuben’s house just before 6:00 P.M. Reuben and Ponter had wisely not started making dinner, being unsure when Louise and Mary would arrive. Ponter actually had been lying down on Reuben’s living-room couch; Mary thought perhaps he was feeling a little under the weather—not surprising, after all he’d been through.

  Louise announced that she had to help make dinner. Mary learned she was a vegetarian, and had apparently felt bad about putting Reuben to extra effort the night before. Reuben, Mary noted, quickly accepted the offer of Louise’s aid—what straight male wouldn’t?

  “Mary, Ponter,” said Reuben, “make yourselves at home. Louise and I will get the barbecue going.”

  Mary felt her heart begin to race, and her mouth went dry. She hadn’t been alone with any man since—since—

  But it was only early evening now, and—

  And Ponter wasn’t—

  It was a cliche, but it was also true, truer than it had ever been.

  Ponter wasn’t like other men.

  Surely it would be all right; after all, Reuben and Louise wouldn’t be far away. Mary took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “Sure,” she said, softly. “Of course.”

  “Great,” said Reuben. “There’s pop and beer in the fridge; we’ll open Louise’s wine with dinner.” He and Louise went into the kitchen, then, a couple of minutes later, headed out to the backyard. Mary found herself sucking in air as Reuben closed the glass door leading to the deck, but he didn’t want to air-condition the great outdoors. Still, with the door closed and the hum of the air-conditioning equipment, she doubted Reuben and Louise could hear her now.

  Mary turned her head to look at Ponter, who had risen to his feet. She managed a weak smile.

  Ponter smiled back.

  He wasn’t ugly; really, he wasn’t. But his face was quite unusual: like someone had grabbed a clay model of a normal human face and pulled it forward.

  “Hello,” said Ponter, speaking for himself.

  “Hi,” said Mary.

  “Awkward,” said Ponter.

  Mary remembered her trip to Germany. She’d hated being unable to make herself understood, hated struggling to read the directions on a pay phone, trying to order in a restaurant, attempting to ask directions. How awful it must be for Ponter—a scientist, an intellectual!—to be reduced to communicating at a child’s level.

  Ponter’s emotions were obvious: he smiled, he frowned, he raised his blond eyebrow, he laughed; she hadn’t seen him cry, but assumed he could. They didn’t yet have the vocabulary to really discuss how he felt about being here; it had been easier to talk about quantum mechanics than about feelings.

  Mary nodded sympathetically. “Yes,” she said, “it must be very awkward, not being able to communicate.”

  Ponter tipped his head a bit. Perhaps he’d understood; perhaps he hadn’t. He looked around Reuben’s living room, as if something were missing. “Your rooms do not have …” He frowned, clearly frustrated, apparently wanting to convey an idea for which neither he nor his implant yet had the vocabulary. Finally, he moved over to the end of a row of heavy built-in bookcases, filled with mystery novels, DVDs, and small Jamaican carvings. Ponter turned around and began to rub his back from side to side against the last bookcase’s edge.

  Mary was astonished at first, then she realized what he was doing: Ponter was using the bookcase as a scratching post. An image of a contented Baloo from Disney’s Jungle Book came to her mind. She tried to suppress a grin. Her own back itched often enough—and, she thought briefly, it had been a long time si
nce she’d had anyone to scratch it for her. If Ponter’s back was indeed hairy, it probably itched with great regularity. Apparently, rooms in his world had dedicated scratching devices of some sort.

  She wondered if it would be polite to offer to scratch his back for him—and that thought made her pause. She’d assumed she’d never want to touch, or be touched, by a man again. There was nothing necessarily sexual about back scratching, but, then again, the literature Keisha had given her confirmed what she already knew: that there was nothing sexual about rape, either. Still, she had no idea what constituted appropriate behavior between a man and a woman in Ponter’s society; she might offend him greatly, or …

  Get over yourself, girl.

  Doubtless she no more appeared attractive to Ponter than Ponter did to her. He scratched for a few moments longer, then stepped away from the massive bookcase. He gestured with an open palm at it, as if inviting Mary to take a turn.

  She worried about damaging the wood or knocking stuff off the shelves, but everything seemed to have survived Ponter’s vigorous movements.

  “Thanks,” said Mary. She crossed the room, moving behind a glass-topped coffee table, and placed her back against the bookcase’s corner. She shimmied a bit against the wood. It actually did feel nice, although the clasp of her bra kept catching as it passed over the angle.

  “Good, yes?” said Ponter.

  Mary smiled. “Yes.”

  Just then, the phone rang. Ponter looked at it, and so did Mary. It rang again. “Certain not for I,” said Ponter.

  Mary laughed and moved over to an end table, which had a teal one-piece phone sitting on it. She picked it up. “Montego residence.”

  “Is Professor Mary Vaughan there, by any chance?” said a man’s voice.

  “Um, speaking.”

  “Great! My name is Sanjit. I’m a producer for ©Discovery, Ca, the nightly science-news program on Discovery Channel Canada.”

  “Wow,” said Mary. “That’s a great show.”

  “Thanks. We’ve been following this stuff about a Neanderthal turning up in Sudbury. Frankly, we didn’t believe it at first, but, well, a wire-service report just came through that you had authenticated the specimen’s DNA.”

  “Yes,” said Mary. “He does indeed have Neanderthal DNA.”

  “What about the—the man himself? He’s not a fake?”

  “No,” said Mary. “He’s the genuine article.”

  “Wow. Well, look, we’d love to have you on the show tomorrow. We’re owned by CTV, so we can send someone over from our local affiliate and do an interview between you up there and Jay Ingram, one of our hosts, down here in Toronto.”

  “Um,” said Mary, “well, sure. I guess.”

  “Great,” said Sanjit. “Now, let me just take you through what we’d like to talk about.”

  Mary turned and looked out the living-room window; she could see Louise and Reuben fussing over the barbecue. “All right.”

  “First, let me see if I’ve got your own history right. You’re a full professor at York, right?”

  “Yes, in genetics.”

  “Tenured?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your Ph.D. is in …?”

  “Molecular biology, actually.”

  “Now, in 1996, you went to Germany to collect DNA from the Neanderthal type specimen there, is that correct?”

  Mary glanced over at Ponter, to see if he was offended that she was talking on the phone. He gave her an indulgent smile, so she continued. “Yes.”

  “Tell me about that,” said Sanjit.

  In all, the pre-interview must have taken twenty minutes. She heard Louise and Reuben pop in and out of the kitchen a couple of times, and Reuben stuck his head in the living room at one point to see whether Mary was okay; she held her hand over the phone’s microphone and told him what was going on. He smiled and went back to his cooking. At last Sanjit finished with his questions, and they finalized the arrangements for taping the interview. Mary put down the phone and turned back to Ponter. “Sorry about that,” she said.

  But Ponter was lurching toward her, one arm outstretched. She realized in an instant what an idiot she’d been; he’d maneuvered her over here, next to the bookcases, away from the door. With one shove from that massive arm, she’d be away from the window, too, invisible to Reuben and Louise outside.

  “Please,” said Mary. “Please. I’ll scream …”

  Ponter took another shuddering step forward, and then—

  And then—

  And then Mary did scream. “Help! Help!”

  Ponter was now slumping to the carpeted floor. His brow above the ridge was slick with perspiration, and his skin had turned an ashen color. Mary knelt down next to him. His chest was moving up and down rapidly, and he’d started to gasp.

  “Help!” she yelled again.

  She heard the glass door sliding open. Reuben dashed in. “What’s—oh, God!”

  He hurried over to the downed Ponter. Louise arrived a few seconds later. Reuben felt Ponter’s pulse.

  “Ponter is sick,” said Hak, using its female voice.

  “Yes,” said Reuben, nodding. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

  “No,” said Hak. “His pulse is elevated, his breathing shallow. His body temperature is 39.”

  Mary was startled for a moment to hear the implant citing what she presumed was a Celsius figure, in which case it was in the fever range—but, then again, it was a logical temperature scale for any ten-fingered being to develop.

  “Does he have allergies?” asked Reuben.

  Hak bleeped.

  “Allergies,” said Reuben. “Foods or things in the environment that normal people are unaffected by, but cause sickness in him.”

  “No,” said Hak.

  “Was he ill before he left your world?”

  “Ill?” repeated Hak.

  “Sick. Not well.”

  “No.”

  Reuben looked at an intricately carved wooden clock, sitting on one of his bookshelves. “It’s been about fifty-one hours since he arrived here. Christ, Christ, Christ.”

  “What is it?” asked Mary.

  “God, I am an idiot,” said Reuben, rising. He hurried off to another room in the house and returned with a worn brown-leather medical bag, which he opened up. He extracted a wooden tongue depressor and a small flashlight. “Ponter,” he said firmly, “open mouth.”

  Ponter’s golden eyes were half-covered by his lids now, but he did what Reuben asked. Evidently, Ponter had never been examined in quite this way before; he resisted the placing of the wooden spatula on his tongue. But, perhaps calmed by some words from Hak that only he could hear, he soon stopped struggling, and Reuben shined the light inside the Neanderthal’s cavernous mouth.

  “His tonsils and other tissues are highly inflamed,” said Reuben. He looked at Mary, then at Louise. “It’s an infection of some sort.”

  “But either you, Professor Vaughan, or I have been with him just about all the time he’s been here,” said Louise, “and we’re not sick.”

  “Exactly,” snapped Reuben. “Whatever he’s got, he probably got here—and it’s something the three of us have natural immunity to, but he doesn’t.” The doctor rummaged in his case, found a vial of pills. “Louise,” he said, without turning around, “get a glass of water, please.”

  Louise hurried off to the kitchen.

  “I’m going to give him some industrial-strength aspirin,” said Reuben to Hak, or to Mary—she wasn’t sure which. “It should bring down his fever.”

  Louise returned with a tumbler full of water. Reuben took it from her. He pushed two pills past Ponter’s lips. “Hak, tell him to swallow the pills.”

  Mary was unsure whether the Companion understood Reuben’s words, or merely guessed at his intention, but a moment later Ponter did indeed swallow the tablets, and, with his own large hand steadied by Reuben’s, managed to chase them down with some water, although much of it ran down his chinless jaw, d
ampening his blond beard.

  But he didn’t splutter at all, Mary noted. A Neanderthal couldn’t choke; that was the plus side of not being able to make as many sounds. The mouth cavity was laid out so that neither liquid nor food could go down the wrong way. Reuben helped pour more water into Ponter, emptying the glass.

  Damn it, thought Mary. God damn it.

  How could they have been so stupid? When Cortez and his conquistadors had come to Central America, they’d brought diseases to which the Aztecs had no immunity—and yet the Aztecs and the Spaniards had only been separated for a few thousand years, time enough for pathogens to develop in one part of the planet that those in the other couldn’t defend against. Ponter’s world had been separated from this one for at least twenty-seven thousand years; diseases had to have evolved here that he would have no resistance to.

  And … and … and …

  Mary shuddered.

  And vice versa, too, of course.

  The same thought had clearly occurred to Reuben. He hurried to his feet, crossed the room, and picked up the teal one-piece phone Mary had used earlier.

  “Hello, operator,” he said into the phone. “My name is Dr. Reuben K. Montego, and this is a medical emergency. I need you to connect me with the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control at Health Canada in Ottawa. Yes, that’s right—whoever’s in charge of infectious-disease control there …”

  Chapter 24

  Adikor Huld’s dooslarm basadlarm was temporarily halted, ostensibly for the evening meal, but also because Adjudicator Sard clearly wanted to give him a chance to calm down, to regain composure, and to consult with others about how he might undo the damage of his violent outburst earlier in the day.

  When the dooslarm basadlarm started back up, Adikor sat again on the stool. He wondered what genius had thought of having the accused sit on a stool while others circled about him? Perhaps Jasmel knew; she was studying history, after all, and such proceedings were ancient in their origins.