Hominids tnp-1

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Oh, yeah—I see it. What about that one there? The zigzag shape?”

  “We call it the Cracked Ice,” said Ponter.

  “Yeah. I can see that. We call it Cassiopeia; that’s the name of an ancient queen. The shape is supposed to represent her throne.”

  “Umm, does not that pointy part in the middle hurt her bum?”

  Mary laughed. “Now that you mention it …” She continued to look at the constellation. “Say, what’s that smudge just below it?”

  “That is—I do not know what name you give it; it is the closest large galaxy to ours.”

  “Andromeda!” declared Mary. “I’ve always wanted to see Andromeda!” She sighed again and continued to look up at the stars. There were more than she’d ever seen in her life. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, “and—oh, my. Oh, my! What’s that?”

  Ponter’s face was now slightly illuminated. “The night lights,” he said.

  “Night lights? You mean the northern lights?”

  “They are associated with the pole, yes.”

  “Wow,” said Mary. “The northern lights! I’ve never seen them before, either.”

  There was surprise in Ponter’s voice. “You haven’t?”

  “No. I mean, I live in Toronto. That’s farther south than Portland, Oregon.” It was a factoid that often astonished Americans, but probably didn’t mean a thing to Ponter.

  “I have seen them thousands of times,” said Ponter. “But I never tire of them.” They were both quiet for a time, enjoying the rippling curtains of light. “Is it common for your people to have not seen them?”

  “I guess,” said Mary. “I mean, there’re not many of us who live in the extreme north—or south, for that matter.”

  “Perhaps that explains it,” said Ponter.

  “What?”

  “Your people’s unawareness of the electromagnetic filaments that shape the universe; Lou and I spoke of this. It was in the night lights that we first identified such filaments; they, rather than this big bang of yours, are our way of explaining the structure of the universe.”

  “Well,” said Mary. “I don’t think you’re going to convince many people that the big bang didn’t happen.”

  “That is fine. Feeling a need to convince others that you are right also is something that comes from religion, I think; I am simply content to know that I am right, even if others do not know it.”

  Mary smiled in the darkness. A man who cried openly, a man who didn’t always have to prove he was right, a man who treated women with respect and as equals. Quite a find, as her sister Christine would say.

  And, thought Mary, it was clear that Ponter liked her—and, of course, it had to be for her mind; she must appear as, well, as homely to him as he did to—no, not to her, not anymore, but to others here on this Earth. Imagine that: a man who really did like her for who she was, not what she looked like.

  Quite a find, indeed, but—

  Mary’s heart skipped a beat. Ponter’s left hand had found her right one in the dark, and had begun gently stroking it.

  And suddenly she felt every muscle in her body tense up. Yes, she could be alone with a man; yes, she could hug and comfort a man; but—

  But, no, it was too soon for that. Too soon. Mary retrieved her hand, hopped off the hood of the car, and opened the door, the dome light stinging her eyes. She got into the driver’s seat, and, a moment later, Ponter entered from the passenger’s side, his head downcast.

  They drove the rest of the way back to Sudbury in silence.

  Chapter 42

  Day Eight

  Friday, August 9

  148/119/02

  NEWS SEARCH

  Keyword(s): Neanderthal

  The environmental group Emerald Dawn has claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. SNO Director Bonnie Jean Mah, however, says that no explosion occurred, blaming the destruction of her facility on a rapid infusion of air …

  X-rays of Ponter Boddit’s skull were put up for sale on eBay this morning. Bidding reached $355 before the online auction site pulled the offer, after a spokesperson for the Sudbury Regional Hospital said on CBC Radio that they must be fake …

  The Canadian dollar dropped more than two-thirds of a cent yesterday as relationships between Canada and the United States continued to show signs of strain over the question of who should be controlling the fate of the interloping caveman …

  Indications from the Montego encampment in Northern Ontario are that Neanderthals don’t share all our scientific beliefs. Indeed, in what’s sure to be a boon to creationists, the Neanderthals apparently reject the big bang, science’s favorite explanation for the origin of the universe …

  Unconfirmed rumors today that Russia has targeted Northern Ontario with ICBMs carrying nuclear weapons. “If a plague has entered our world, somebody needs to stand ready to sterilize the infected area, for the greater good of all mankind,” said a person signing himself as Yuri A. Petrov in an Internet newsgroup devoted to crossborder health issues …

  Ponter Boddit has agreed to throw the first pitch at SkyDome next Thursday, when the Blue Jays face the New York Yankees …

  “According to our CNN online poll, the top three questions people would like to ask the Neanderthal are: What are women like in your world? What happened to our kind of human in your world? And do you believe in Jesus Christ?”

  Lurt, Adikor’s woman-mate, had every right to view her own alibi archive whenever she wished. Indeed, she’d had cause to access it just a few months earlier, when a formula she’d written on the wallboard had accidentally been erased by an apprentice. Rather than trying to re-create it, she’d simply come to the archive building, accessed her alibi recording, found a good, clear view of the wallboard, and jotted down the string of symbols.

  Because of this recent visit, Lurt knew that her alibi cube was plugged into receptacle 13,997; she told the Keeper of Alibis that, rather than having her look it up on the computer. The keeper accompanied Lurt to the correct niche, and Lurt faced her Companion toward the blue eye. “I, Lurt Fradlo, wish to access my own alibi archive for reasons of personal curiosity. Timestamp.”

  The eye turned yellow; the cube agreed that Lurt was indeed who she claimed to be.

  The archivist held up her Companion. “I, Mabla Dabdalb, Keeper of Alibis, hereby certify that Lurt Fradlo’s identity has been confirmed in my presence. Timestamp.” The eye went bloodshot, and a tone emanated from the speaker.

  “All set,” said the keeper. “You can use the projector in room four.” Dabdalb turned to go, and Lurt followed her. She entered room four, which was a small chamber with a single chair. Somewhere, in one of the other rooms, Lurt imagined an enforcer was watching Adikor’s transmissions in real time as they were being received and recorded.

  But watching as something was recorded was entirely different from trying to record and play back at the same time. Lurt pulled on control buds, selecting a day at random to review, and watched as the holo-bubble in front of her filled with banal pictures of her working in her lab. As the images played on, Lurt left the chamber, ostensibly heading for the washroom. And once she’d passed into a corridor that had no one else in it, she slipped on a pair of dining gloves, fished out the small device she’d brought with her, activated it, and dropped it into a recycling tub. She then removed the gloves.

  Bolbay had been wrong, Lurt thought, whistling as she returned to the viewing chamber. Deep underground wasn’t the perfect place to commit an unobserved crime. No, the perfect place was right here in the archive pavilion, when no one else was watching you and your own alibi cube was playing back instead of recording …

  Her first thought had been to use hydrogen sulfide, which surely would have had the desired effect. But concentrations greater than 500 parts per million over even a short period could be fatal. She’d then considered polecat musk, but when she’d looked up the formula, it had been complex: trans-2-Butene-l-thiol, 3-Methyl-l-butanethi
ol, trans-2-Butenyl thioacetate, and more. Finally, she settled on ammonium sulfide, that favorite of prankster children who hadn’t come to grips with the fact that their Companions were recording their actions.

  Having a keen olfactory sense certainly had its advantages, although Lurt had heard it said that the reason people ate so few plants, while other primates thrived on them, was that the acute sensitivity to odors made it hard to tolerate the flatulence that went with a diet heavy in vegetation. Anyway, this was just what the doctor had ordered—even if that doctor was a physicist trying to keep from going under the knife.

  Lurt thought she smelled it first, before anyone else, even though her viewing room was hardly the closest to the corridor where she’d left the device. Then again, she’d been waiting for it, doubtlessly dilating her nostrils in anticipation. But she refused to be the first one to react. She sat until she heard others running about, then left her room, trying not to gag at the horrendous stench. A big, burly fellow came out of one of the other viewing chambers, holding a hand over his nose. Lurt thought perhaps he was the enforcer monitoring Adikor’s transmissions, and that was confirmed when, as she herself exited, she caught sight of the holo-bubble the man had been watching, which showed Jasmel and Adikor leaving Adikor’s house.

  “What is that awful smell?” said a wincing Dabdalb, the Keeper of Alibis, as Lurt passed her.

  “It’s horrible!” said another patron, hustling through the lobby.

  “Open the windows! Open the windows!” shouted a third.

  Lurt joined the small crowd hurrying out into the clean, open air outside the building. It would be at least a quarter of a day, Lurt knew, before the smell would dissipate enough to make going back indoors possible.

  She hoped that would be enough time for Adikor to accomplish what he was trying to do.

  * * *

  Mary went to Laurentian University the next morning, having finally managed to get rid of the reporters waiting in the lobby of the Ramada. They’d been disappointed that Ponter hadn’t turned out to be staying there, as well. Apparently Reuben had implied to the journalists that he might be—presumably as a way of putting them off Ponter’s trail; Mary had returned him to Reuben’s house last night, which, as far as she knew, was where he’d stayed.

  At 10:30 A.M., Mary was surprised to run into Louise Benoit in the corridor outside the Laurentian genetics lab. Louise was wearing tight-fitting denim cutoffs and a white T-shirt tied in a knot over her flat midriff. Well, thought Mary, it was blisteringly hot today, but really—she looks like she’s asking for it …

  No.

  Mary cursed herself; she knew better than that. No matter how a woman dressed, she was entitled to safety, entitled to be able to walk around without being molested.

  Mary decided to be friendly and trotted out her few words of French. “Bonjour,” she said, as she got closer to Louise. “Comment sa va?”

  “I’m fine,” replied Louise. “And you?”

  “Fine. What brings you here?”

  Louise pointed down the hall. “I was visiting some guys I know in the physics department. There’s not much for me to do at SNO right now. They’ve finished draining the detector chamber, and a team from the original manufacturer is just beginning work on reassembling the sphere, although that will take weeks. So I thought I’d talk over an idea with a couple of the people here—see if they could shoot any holes in it.”

  Mary was heading toward the vending machines, looking to get a bag of Miss Vickie’s sea-salt-and-malt-vinegar kettle chips—an indulgence she could only afford in a monetary sense, but it had long been traditional for her to start each work week with a 43-gram bag.

  “And did they?” Mary asked. “Shoot any holes in it, I mean?”

  Louise shook her head and fell in beside Mary as she continued on down to the lounge.

  “Well, that’s the best kind of idea, isn’t it?” Mary said.

  “I suppose,” said Louise. Once they reached the lounge, Mary fished in her purse for some change. She pulled out a loonie and a quarter, and fed them into one of the vending machines. Louise, meanwhile, got herself a cup of coffee from another machine.

  “Remember that meeting we had in the Inco conference room?” said Louise. “Well, as I said then, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics states that whenever a quantum event can go two ways, it does go two ways.”

  “A splitting of the timeline,” said Mary, leaning her bum against the arm of a vinyl-padded chair in the lounge.

  “Oui,” said Louise. “Well, I spent some time talking to Ponter about this.”

  “Ponter mentioned that,” said Mary. “I must have missed it.”

  “It was late at night, and—”

  “You went into Ponter’s room again after we’d finished the language lessons?” Mary was astonished by the rush of—of, my God, of jealousy—she felt.

  “Sure. I like to be up at night; you know that. I wanted to learn more about the Neanderthal view of physics.”

  “And?” said Mary, trying to keep her tone even.

  “Well, it’s interesting,” said Louise. She took a sip of her coffee. “Here in this world, we’ve got two major interpretations for quantum mechanics: the Copenhagen interpretation and Everett’s Many-Worlds interpretation. The former postulates a special role for the observer—that consciousness actually influences reality. Well, that idea makes some physicists very uncomfortable; it’s seen as a return to vitalism. Everett’s Many-Worlds interpretation was an attempt to work around that. It says that quantum phenomena cause new universes to split off constantly, with each possible outcome of a quantum interaction occurring, but in a separate universe. No observers are required to shape reality; instead, every reality that can conceivably exist is automatically created.”

  “Okay,” said Mary, not because she really understood, but because the alternative seemed to be an even longer lecture.

  “Well, Ponter’s people have a single theory of quantum mechanics that’s sort of a synthesis of our two theories. It allows for many worlds—that is, for parallel universes—but the creation of such universes doesn’t result from random quantum events. Rather, it only happens through the actions of conscious observers.”

  “Why don’t we have the same single theory, then?” asked Mary, munching on a particularly large chip.

  “Partly because there’s a lot of math that seems irreconcilable between the two interpretations,” said Louise. “And, of course, there’s that old problem of politics in science: those physicists who favor the Copenhagen interpretation have devoted their careers to proving that it’s right; same thing for the guys on Everett’s side. For them all to sit down and say, ‘Maybe we’re both partly right—and both partly wrong’ just isn’t going to happen.”

  “Ah,” said Mary. “It’s like the Regional Continuity versus Replacement debate in anthropology.”

  Louise nodded. “If you say so. But suppose the Neanderthal synthesis of quantum physics is actually correct. It implies that consciousness—human volition—has the power to spin off new universes. Well, that raises a significant question. Presumably in the beginning, at the moment of the big bang, there must have been only one universe. Sometime later, it started splitting.”

  “I thought Ponter didn’t believe in the big bang?” said Mary.

  “Yes, apparently Neanderthal scientists think the universe has always existed. They believe that on large scales, redshifts—which are our principal evidence for an expanding universe—are proportional to age, rather than distance; that is, that mass varies over time. And they think the gross structure of galaxies and galactic clusters are caused by monopoles and plasma-pinching magnetic vortex filaments. Ponter says the cosmic microwave background—which we take as the residue of the big-bang fireball—is really the result of electrons trapped in these strong magnetic fields absorbing and emitting microwaves. Repeated absorption and emission by billions of galaxies smoothed out the effect, he says, producing the unifo
rm background we detect now.”

  “Does that seem possible to you?” asked Mary.

  Louise shrugged. “I’m going to have to look into it.” She took another sip of coffee. “But, you know, after telling me all that, Ponter said the most astonishing thing.”

  “What?” asked Mary.

  “I guess you showed him a church service, right?”

  “Yes. On TV.”

  Louise took a seat on one of the other vinyl-covered chairs. “Well,” she said, “apparently he spent some time that night watching Vision TV, soaking up more religious thought. He said our story of the universe having an origin is just a creation myth, like from the Bible. ‘In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth …’ and all that. ‘Even your science,’ Ponter said, ‘is contaminated by this error of religion.’”

  Mary sat down properly as well. “You know … I mean, physics is your field, not mine, but maybe he’s right. I mentioned Regional Continuity versus Replacement a moment ago; sometimes that’s called Multiregionalism versus Out-of-Africa. Anyway, there are those who’ve observed that Replacement, which is what I and other geneticists favor, is also basically a biblical position: humanity came full-blown out of Africa, ejected from a garden, and there’s a hard-and-fast line between us and everything else in the animal kingdom, including even other contemporaneous members of the genus Homo.”

  “It’s an interesting point of view,” said Louise.

  “And you can argue that the other side is fighting for a biblical interpretation, too: the parallels between Multi-regionalism and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel are pretty blatant. Beyond that, there’s the whole ‘mitochondrial Eve’ hypothesis—that all modern humans trace their origin to one woman who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago. Even the theory’s name—Eve!—screams that it’s being pushed more because of biblical resonances than because it’s good science.” Mary paused. “Anyway, sorry, you were talking about the Neanderthal version of quantum physics …”