Hak bleeped.
“Cuckolded,” repeated Mary. “That’s when a man is investing his energies providing for children that aren’t biologically his. But with hidden ovulation—”
Ponter’s laugh split the air; his massive chest and deep mouth gave him a deep, thunderous guffaw.
Mary and Louise looked at him, astonished. “What’s so funny?” said Reuben, depositing another Coke in front of Ponter.
Ponter held up a hand; he was trying to stop laughing, but wasn’t succeeding yet. Tears had appeared at the corners of his sunken eyes, and his normally pale skin was looking quite red.
Mary, still seated at the table, put her hands on her hips—but immediately became self-conscious of her body language; hands on hips increased one’s apparent size, in order to intimidate. But Ponter was so much stouter and better muscled than any woman—or just about any man—that it was a ridiculous thing to be doing. Still, she demanded, “Well?”
“I am sorry,” said Ponter, regaining his control. He used his long thumb to wipe the tears from his eyes. “It is just that sometimes your people do have ridiculous ideas.” He smiled. “When you talk about hidden ovulation, you mean that human females do not have genital swelling when they are in heat, right?”
Mary nodded. “Chimps and bonobos do; so do gorillas and most other primates.”
“But humans did not stop having such swelling in order to hide ovulation,” said Ponter. “Genital swelling disappeared when it was no longer an effective signal. It disappeared when the climate got colder and humans started wearing clothing. That sort of visual display, based on engorging tissues with fluid, is energetically expensive; there was no value in maintaining it once we were covering our bodies with animal hides. But, at least for my people, ovulation was still obvious due to smell.”
“You can smell ovulation, as well as menstruation?” asked Reuben.
“The … chemicals … associated with them, yes.”
“Pheromones,” supplied Reuben.
Mary nodded slowly. “And so,” she said, as much to Ponter as to herself, “males could go off for weeks at a time without worrying about their females being impregnated by somebody else.”
“That is right,” said Ponter. “But there is more to it than that.”
“Yes?” said Mary.
“We say now that the reason our male ancestors—I think you have the same metaphor—‘headed for the hills’ was because of the, ah, unpleasantness of females during Last Five.”
“Last Five?” said Louise.
“The last five days of the month; the time leading up to the beginning of their periods.”
“Oh,” said Reuben. “PMS. Premenstrual syndrome.”
“Yes,” said Ponter. “But, of course, that is not the real reason.” He shrugged a little. “My daughter Jasmel is studying pre-generation-one history; she explained it to me. What really happened was that men used to fight constantly over access to women. But, as Mare has noted, the only time access to women is evolutionarily important is during the part of each month when they might become pregnant. Since all women’s cycles were synchronized, men got along much better for most of the month if they retreated from females, only to return as a group when it was reproductively important that they do so. It was not female unpleasantness that led to the split; it was male violence.”
Mary nodded. It had been years since she’d co-taught that course on Sexual Power Relationships, but it seemed downright typical: men causing the problem and blaming women for it. Mary doubted she’d ever meet a female from Ponter’s world, but, at that moment, she felt real affinity with her Neanderthal sisters.
Chapter 37
“Healthy day, Daklar,” said Jasmel, coming through the door to the house. Although Jasmel Ket and Daklar Bolbay still shared a home, they had not spoken much since the dooslarm basadlarm.
“Healthy day,” repeated Bolbay, without warmth. “If you—” Her nostrils dilated. “You’re not alone.”
Adikor came through the door as well. “Healthy day,” he said.
Bolbay looked at Jasmel. “More treachery, child?”
“It’s not treachery,” Jasmel said. “It’s concern—for you, and for my father.”
“What do you want of me?” said Bolbay, looking through narrowed eyes at Adikor.
“The truth,” he said. “Just the truth.”
“About what?”
“About you. About why you are pursuing me.”
“I’m not the one under investigation,” said Bolbay.
“No,” agreed Adikor. “Not yet. But that may change.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am prepared to have you served with documents of my own,” said Adikor.
“On what basis?”
“On the basis that you are unlawfully interfering with my life.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” Adikor shrugged. “We’ll let an adjudicator decide that.”
“It’s a transparent attempt to stall the process that will lead to your sterilization,” said Bolbay. “Anyone can see that.”
“If it is—if it is that transparent, that flimsy—then an adjudicator will dismiss the matter … but not before I have had a chance to question you.”
“Question me? About what?”
“About your motive. About why you are doing this to me.”
Bolbay looked at Jasmel. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“It was also,” said Jasmel, “my idea that we come here first, before Adikor proceeded with the accusation. This is a family matter: you, Daklar, were my mother’s woman-mate, and Adikor here is my father’s man-mate. You have been through a lot, Daklar—we all have—with the loss of my mother.”
“This has nothing to do with Klast!” snapped Bolbay. “Nothing.” She looked at Adikor. “It’s about him.”
“Why?” said Adikor. “Why is it about me?”
Bolbay shook her head again. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Yes, we do,” said Adikor. “And you will answer my questions here, or you will answer them in front of an adjudicator. But you will answer them.”
“You’re bluffing,” said Bolbay.
Adikor raised his left arm, with his wrist facing toward her. “Is your name Daklar Bolbay, and do you reside here in Saldak Center?”
“I won’t accept documents from you.”
“You’re just delaying the inevitable,” said Adikor. “I will get a judicial server—who can upload to your implant whether you pull out the control bud or not.” A pause. “I say again, Are you Daklar Bolbay, and do you reside here in Saldak Center?”
“You would really do this?” said Bolbay. “You would really drag me before an adjudicator?”
“As you have dragged me,” said Adikor.
“Please,” said Jasmel. “Just tell him. It’s better this way—better for you.”
Adikor crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Well?”
“I’ve nothing to say,” Bolbay replied.
Jasmel let out a great, long sigh. “Ask her,” she said softly when it was done, “about her man-mate.”
“You don’t know anything about that,” snapped Bolbay.
“Don’t I?” said Jasmel. “How did you learn that Adikor was the one who had hit my father?”
Bolbay said nothing.
“Obviously, Klast told you,” said Jasmel.
“Klast was my woman-mate,” said Bolbay, defiantly. “She didn’t keep secrets from me.”
“And she was my mother,” said Jasmel. “Neither did she keep them from me.”
“But … she … I …” Bolbay trailed off.
“Tell me about your man-mate,” said Adikor. “I—I don’t think I’ve ever met him, have I?”
Bolbay shook her head slowly. “No. He’s been gone for a long time; we separated long ago.”
“And that’s why you don’t have children of your own?” asked Adikor, gently.
&nbs
p; “You’re so smug,” replied Bolbay. “You think it’s that simple? I couldn’t keep a mate, and so I never reproduced? Is that what you think?”
“I don’t think anything,” said Adikor.
“I would have been a good mother,” said Bolbay, perhaps as much to herself as to Adikor. “Ask Jasmel. Ask Megameg. Since Klast died, I’ve looked after them wonderfully. Isn’t that so, Jasmel? Isn’t that so?”
Jasmel nodded. “But you’re a 145, just like Ponter and Klast. Just like Adikor. You might still be able to have a child of your own. The dates for Two becoming One will be shifted again next year; you could …”
Adikor’s eyebrow rolled up. “It would be your last chance, wouldn’t it? You’ll be 520 months old—forty years—next year, just like me. You might have a child then, as part of generation 149, but certainly not ten years later, when generation 150 will be born.”
There was a sneer in Bolbay’s voice. “Did you need your fancy quantum computer to figure that out?”
“And Ponter,” said Adikor, nodding slowly, “Ponter was without a woman-mate. You and he had loved the same woman, after all, and you were already tabant for his two children, so you thought …”
“You and my father?” said Jasmel. She didn’t sound shocked by the notion, merely surprised.
“And why not?” said Bolbay, defiantly. “I’d known him almost as long as you had, Adikor, and he and I had always gotten along.”
“But now he’s gone, too,” said Adikor. “That was my first thought, you know: that you were simply inconsolable over the loss of him, and so were snapping teeth at me. But you must see, Daklar, that you’re wrong to be doing that. I loved Ponter, and certainly wouldn’t have interfered with his choice of a new woman-mate, so—”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Bolbay, shaking her head. “Nothing.”
“Then why do you hate me so?”
“I don’t hate you because of what happened to Ponter,” she said.
“But you do hate me.”
Bolbay was silent. Jasmel was looking at the floor.
“Why?” said Adikor. “I’ve never done anything to you.”
“But you hit Ponter,” snapped Bolbay.
“Ages ago. And he forgave me.”
“And so you got to stay whole,” she said. “You got to have a child of your own. You got away with it.”
“With what?”
“With your crime! With trying to kill Ponter!”
“I wasn’t trying to kill him.”
“You were violent, a monster. You should have been sterilized. But my Pelbon …”
“Who is Pelbon?” said Adikor.
Bolbay fell silent again.
“Her man-mate,” said Jasmel, softly.
“What happened to Pelbon?” asked Adikor.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” said Bolbay, looking away. “You have no idea. You wake up one morning to find two enforcers waiting for you, and they take your man-mate away, and—”
“And what?” said Adikor.
“And they castrate him,” said Bolbay.
“Why?” asked Adikor. “What did he do?”
“He didn’t do anything,” said Bolbay. “He didn’t do a single thing.”
“Then why …” started Adikor. But then it hit him. “Oh. One of his relatives …”
Bolbay nodded but didn’t meet Adikor’s eyes. “His brother had assaulted someone, and so his brother was ordered sterilized along with—”
“Along with everyone who shared fifty percent of his genetic material,” finished Adikor.
“He didn’t do anything, my Pelbon,” said Bolbay. “He didn’t do anything to anyone, and he was punished, I was punished. But you! You almost killed a man, and you got away with it! They should have castrated you, not my poor Pelbon!”
“Daklar,” said Adikor. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry …”
“Get out,” said Bolbay firmly. “Just leave me alone.”
“I—”
“Get out!”
Chapter 38
Ponter finished his hamburger, then looked at Louise, Reuben, and Mary in turn. “I do not wish to complain,” he said, “but I am getting tired of this—this cow, do you call it? Is there a chance we might ask the people outside to bring us something else for tonight?”
“Like what?” asked Reuben.
“Oh, anything,” said Ponter. “Maybe some mammoth steaks.”
“What?” said Reuben.
“Mammoth?” said Mary, stunned.
“Is Hak incorrectly rendering what I am saying?” asked Ponter. “Mammoth. You know—a hairy elephant of northern climes.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Mary. “We know what a mammoth is, but …”
“But what?” asked Ponter, eyebrow lifted.
“But, well, I mean … mammoths are extinct,” said Mary.
“Extinct?” repeated Ponter, surprised. “Come to think of it, I have not seen any here, but, well, I assumed they did not like coming close to this massive city.”
“No, no, they’re extinct,” said Louise. “All over the world. They’ve been extinct for thousands of years.”
“Why?” asked Ponter. “Was it illness?”
Everyone fell silent. Mary slowly exhaled the air in her lungs, trying to decide how to present this. “No, that’s not why,” she said, at last. “Umm, you see, we—our kind, our ancestors—we hunted mammoths to extinction.”
Ponter’s eyes went wide. “You did what?”
Mary felt nauseous; she hated having her version of humanity come up so short. “We killed them for food, and, well, we kept on killing them until there were none left.”
“Oh,” said Ponter, softly. He looked out the window, at the large backyard to Reuben’s house. “I am fond of mammoths,” he said. “Not just their meat—which is delicious—but as animals, as part of the landscape. There is a small herd of them that lives near my home. I enjoy seeing them.”
“We have their skeletons,” said Mary, “and their tusks, and every once in a while a frozen one is found in Siberia, but …”
“All of them,” said Ponter, shaking his head back and forth slowly, sadly. “You killed all of them …”
Mary felt like protesting, “Not me personally,” but that would be disingenuous; the blood of the mammoths was indeed on her house. Still, she needed to make some defense, feeble though it was: “It happened a long time ago.”
Ponter looked queasy. “I am almost afraid to ask,” said Ponter, “but there are other large animals I am used to seeing in this part of the world on my version of Earth. Again, I had assumed they were just avoiding this city of yours, but …”
Reuben shook his shaven head. “No, that’s not it.”
Mary closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry, Ponter. We wiped out just about all the megafauna—here, and in Europe … and in Australia”—she felt a knot in her stomach as the litany grew—“and in New Zealand, and in South America. The only continent that has many really big animals left is Africa, and most of those are endangered.”
Bleep.
“On the verge of extinction,” said Louise.
Ponter’s tone was one of betrayal. “But you said this had all happened long ago.”
Mary looked down at her empty plate. “We stopped killing mammoths long ago, because, well, we ran out of mammoths to kill. And we stopped killing Irish elk, and the big cats that used to populate North America, and woolly rhinoceroses, and all the others, because there were none left to kill.”
“To kill every member of a species …” said Ponter. He shook his massive head slowly back and forth.
“We’ve learned better,” Mary said. “We now have programs to protect endangered species, and we’ve had some real successes. The whooping crane was once almost gone; so was the bald eagle. And the buffalo. They’ve all come back.”
Ponter’s voice was cold. “Because you stopped hunting them to extremes.”
Mary thought about protesting that it w
asn’t all the result of hunting; much of it had to do with the destruction by humans of the natural habitats of these creatures—but somehow that didn’t seem any better.
“What … what other species are still endangered?” asked Ponter.
Mary shrugged a little. “Lots of kinds of birds. Giant tortoises. Panda bears. Sperm whales. Chim …”
“Chim?” said Ponter. “What are—?” He tilted his head, perhaps listening to Hak providing its best guess at the word Mary had started to say. “Oh, no. No. Chimpanzees? But … but these are our cousins. You hunt our cousins?”
Mary felt all of two feet tall. How could she tell him that chimps were killed for food, that gorillas were murdered so their hands could be made into exotic ashtrays?
“They are invaluable,” continued Ponter. “Surely you, as a geneticist, must know that. They are the only close living relatives we have; we can learn much about ourselves by studying them in the wild, by examining their DNA.”
“I know,” said Mary, softly. “I know.”
Ponter looked at Reuben, then at Louise, and then at Mary, sizing them up, it seemed, as if he were seeing them—really seeing them—for the first time.
“You kill with abandon,” he said. “You kill entire species. You even kill other primates.” He paused and looked from face to face again, as if giving them a chance to forestall what he was about to say, to come up with a logical explanation, a mitigating factor. But Mary said nothing, and neither did the other two, and so Ponter went on. “And, on this world, my kind is extinct.”
“Yes,” said Mary, very softly. She knew what had happened. Although not every paleoanthropologist agreed, many shared her view that between 40,000 and 27,000 years ago, Homo sapiens—anatomically modern humans—completed the first of what would be many deliberate or inadvertent genocides, wiping the planet free of the only other extant member of the same genus, a separate, more gentle species that perhaps had been better entitled to the double meaning of the word humanity.
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