Hybrids

by neetha Napew

  Regardless, it was as good a code name as any: she’d think of Jock’s original as the Wipeout virus, and her modified, do-nothing version as Surfer Joe. Of course, she saved Surfer Joe with the same filename Jock’s geneticist had used for the Wipeout version, but at least she could keep them straight in her mind now.

  Mary leaned back in her chair.

  Itdid feel like playing God.

  And, she had to admit, it felt good.

  She allowed herself a little chuckle, wondering what Neanderthals called megalomaniac thoughts. Surely not playing God. Maybe “pulling a Lonwis”...

  “Mary!”

  Mary’s heart jumped. She’d thought she was alone here. She looked up and-

  God, no.

  Cornelius Ruskin was standing in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” Mary said, her voice trembling. She grabbed a heavy malachite paperweight off the worktable.

  Cornelius held up a hand; in it was a brown leather wallet. “I forgot my wallet at my desk. I just came in to pick it up.”

  Suddenly it hit Mary. The other geneticist. The one Jock had been using to code this...thisevil . It was Cornelius. It had to be.

  “What are you doing in Jock’s office?” asked Cornelius.

  Cornelius couldn’t see Jock’s LCD screen from the doorway. “Nothing. Just looking for a book.”

  “Well,” said Cornelius. “Mary, I-“

  “You’ve got your wallet. Get out.”

  “Mary, if you’d just-“

  Mary’s stomach was roiling. “Louise is upstairs, you know. I’ll scream.”

  Cornelius stood in the doorway, his expression weary. “I just want to say I’m sorry-“

  “Get out! Get the hell out of here!”

  Cornelius hesitated for a moment, then turned. Mary listened to his footfalls go down the corridor, and the sound of the heavy door to the mansion opening and closing.

  Her vision was blurry, and she felt nauseous. She took a deep breath, then another one, trying to calm herself. Her hands were slick with sweat, and there was a sour taste at the back of her throat.Damn him, damn him, damn him...

  The rape exploded in Mary’s mind again, with a vividness that she hadn’t felt for weeks. Cornelius Ruskin’s cold blue eyes visible behind the black ski mask, the stench of cigarettes on his breath, his arm pushing her back against that retaining wall.

  God damn Cornelius Ruskin.

  God damn Jock Krieger.

  Damn them both to hell.

  Damnmen to hell.

  Only men would create something like the Wipeout virus. Only men would do something so heinous, so abominable.

  Mary snorted. There weren’t even proper words left for such evil. “Heinous” had been robbed of its power by Keanu Reeves using it inBill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure , and “abominable” was almost always followed by “snowman,” as if such evil could only exist in the realm of myth.

  She’d always associate such evil with this world, the world of Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot and Paul Bernardo and Osama bin Laden.

  And Jock Krieger.

  And Cornelius Ruskin.

  A world ofmen .

  No, not just of men. A very specifickind of man. MaleHomo sapiens .

  Mary took a deep breath, calming herself. Not all men were evil. She knew that. She really did. There was her dad, and her brothers, and Reuben Montego, and Fathers Caldicott and Belfontaine.

  And Phil Donahue and Pierre Trudeau and Ralph Nader and Bill Cosby.

  And the Dalai Lama and Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Compassionate men, admirable men. Yes, there weresome .

  Mary had no idea how to distinguish genetically between great men and evil ones, between visionaries and psychopaths. But there was one glaring genetic marker for male violence: the Y chromosome. Granted, not everyone who had a Y chromosome was an evil man; indeed, the vast majority weren’t. But every evil man, by definition, had to have a Y chromosome, the shortest of allHomo sapiens chromosomes and yet the one that had the biggest impact on psychology.

  And history.

  And the safety of women and children.

  Cornelius Ruskin had a Y.

  Jock Krieger likewise.

  Y.

  Why?

  No. No, it was too much. It really was too redolent of playing God.

  But shecould do it. Oh, she’d never dream of unleashing such a thing here, in this world. She was no murderer-that much of her own personal code of ethics Mary was certain of, for the man she hated most, the man she most wanted to see punished, was Cornelius Ruskin, and when Ponter had proposed killing him, Mary had insisted he not do it.

  And, despite Adikor’s suggestion, Mary was sure Jock Krieger never meant for his Wipeout virus to be introduced tothis version of Earth. It was doubtless intended for the other version, the Neanderthal world, a serpent for the un-spoiled Eden.

  Of course, if everything went as planned, if she managed to stop Jock, no virus would be released in the Neanderthal world.

  But if one was to be, well, hopefully it would be Mary’s Surfer Joe, either in the version she’d just produced, which did nothing, or...

  Or...

  She could make a more radical revision, producing a version that modified the original logic to act only if-

  It was simple, so simple.

  A version that would act only if the host cell the virus had invadeddid not belong to a Neanderthal, anddid contain a Y chromosome.

  If, and only if...

  Mary frowned. A revised Surfer Joe.

  A Mark II-just like the new Pope, taking it all one step further.

  She shook her head. It was madness. Sinful.

  Or was it? She’d be protecting an entire world from maleHomo sapiens . After all, if she and the paleoanthropologists who shared her view were right, it had been maleHomo sapiens -the hunters in the clan, not the gatherers, not the women-who had slaughtered their browridged cousins here until not a single one was left.

  And now, using the tools of the twenty-first century and technology borrowed from the Barasts themselves, maleHomo sapiens were preparing to do again what maleH. sap had done once before.

  Mary looked at Jock’s computer screen.

  It would be so simple. So very simple. The logic tree was already in place. She only needed to change the sequences being tested for, and which way the logic branched.

  Testing for a Y chromosome was easy enough: just pick a gene from the Human Genome Project database that appeared only on that chromosome. Mary rummaged on Jock’s desk for pen and paper, then wrote out the logic in longhand on a yellow ruled pad:

  Step 1: Is a Y chromosome present?

  Ifyes, this is a male: go to Step 2

  Ifno, abort (this isn’t a male)

  Step 2: Is Gene ALPHA found next to a telomere?

  Ifyes, abort (this is a Neanderthal)

  Ifno, this is probably a Gliksin: go to Step 3

  Step 3: Is Gene BETA found next to a telomere?

  Ifyes, abort (this should never happen in a Gliksin)

  Ifno, this is definitely a Gliksin: go to Step 4

  Mary looked at what she’d written over and over again, but couldn’t find a flaw. There was no point at which the logic could get caught in an infinite loop, and there were not one but two checks to make sure she was really dealing with aHomo sapiens male and not aHomo neanderthalensis one.

  Of course, it was all moot-surely Jockwould be stopped before he could release his virus. Modifying it now was just a safeguard, in case somehow it made it over to the other side.

  Mary shook her head and looked at her watch. It was well after midnight-the start of a new day.

  She should just go home now. Jock’s Wipeout virus had been defused; it would do nothing at all, assuming, as Mary fervently hoped, that he hadn’t yet used the codon writer to output the actual viral molecules. Surfer Joe would harm no one. That’s all she’d set out to accomplish, after all.
>
  That’s all that needed to be done.

  And yet...

  And yet.

  No one would have to get hurt. She’d find a way to disseminate the information, to make sure that everyone on this Earth knew that it was unsafe for male Gliksins to travel to the Neanderthal world. The Barast tuned-laser decontamination technology would make sure the Surfer Joe virus never got back across the portal to this world. Male Gliksins-the majority that were decent, and the horrible minority that did so very much harm-would be safe, just as long as they left Ponter’s world the hell alone.

  Mary took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

  She folded her hands in her lap, the left still showing the pale indentation on the third finger where her wedding ring had once been.

  And Mary Vaughan thought and thought and thought.

  And at last she unfolded her hands.

  And then, of course, she did the only thing she could do.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “And although someday we may also travel toDargal-for that is what the Neanderthals named the red planet of their universe, the crimson beacon that beams down upon the continents of Durkanu, Podlar, Ranilass, Evsoy, Galasoy, and Nalkanu-we will leave that version of Mars as we find it. Truly, like so much in this new era we are now entering, we will have our cake and eat it, too...”

  Mary Vaughan sat bolt upright in her bed at Bristol Harbour Village, suddenly awake.

  When does-what do you call it?-‘Two becoming One’? When does that happen next?That’s what Jock had asked yesterday. Mary had been too upset about Lonwis’s deteriorating condition and Ponter’s impending departure to really think about it then, but it hit her now, forcing her awake: why Jock should care.

  While Two were One would be the perfect time to release his virus. It would be far easier to infect at least the local population in Saldak when everyone of both sexes was together in the Center-and, of course, there was more intercity traffic during Two being One than at any other time of the month; the virus would be spread rapidly.

  The four-day holiday would begin the day after tomorrow. That meant Jock wouldn’t act until then-meaning Mary had to actbefore then.

  She looked up at the ceiling to see what time it was-but she washere , notthere , and there was nothing on her ceiling. She turned to the digital clock on the night table, the red digits glowing: 5:04A.M. Mary fumbled to turn on the table lamp, then picked up her phone and called Louise Benoît’s home number in Rochester.

  “Allô?” said a sleepy voice after six rings.

  “Louise, it’s Mary. Look-Two become One the day after tomorrow. I’m sure that’s when Jock is going to release his virus.”

  Louise was clearly struggling to consciousness. “Two becoming...”

  “Yes, yes! Two becoming One. It’s the only time on the Neanderthal world when there’s high population density in their cities, and a lot of intercity traffic. We have to do something.”

  “D’accord,” said Louise, her voice raw. “Mais quoi?”

  “What you said we should do: go to the media, blow the whistle. But, look, it’ll be safer for both of us if we’re back in Canada before we do that. I’ll be out of here in half an hour, meaning I can pick you up by 6:30A.M. We’ll drive up to Toronto.”

  “Bon,” said Louise. “I’ll be ready.”

  Mary clicked off and headed for the bathroom, starting the shower running. Now, if she only knewhow to blow the whistle. Of course, she’d been interviewed on TV and radio plenty of times now, and-

  She thought of a nice female producer she’d met at CBC Newsworld in 1996, back when the only Neanderthals known were fossils, back when Mary had isolated a DNA sample from the Neanderthal type specimen at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum. CBC on-air personalities probably didn’t have listed phone numbers, but there was no particular reason why a producer wouldn’t. Mary headed back into the bedroom, scooped up the telephone handset, dialed 1-416-555-1212, Toronto directory assistance, and got the number she needed.

  A minute later she had another groggy woman on the phone. “H-hello?”

  “Kerry?” said Mary. “Kerry Johnston?”

  She could almost hear the woman rubbing her eyes. “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “This is Mary Vaughan. Remember me? The geneticist from York-the expert on Neanderthal DNA?”

  A small part of Mary was disappointed that neither Louise nor Kerry had offered up the cliché, “Do you have any idea what time it is?” Instead, Kerry seemed now to be instantly awake. “Yes, I remember you,” she said.

  “I’ve got a huge story for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “No, it’s nothing I can tell you about by phone. I’m down in Rochester, New York, right now, but I’ll be in Toronto in about five hours. I need you to put me live on Newsworld when I get there...”

  Mary and Louise were driving along the Queenston-Lewiston bridge over the Niagara River. Exactly in the middle of the bridge three flags snapped salutes in the breeze, marking the border: first the Stars and Stripes, then the robin’s-egg-blue UN flag, and finally the Maple Leaf. “Nice to be back home,” said Louise as they passed them.

  As she always did, Mary felt herself relax a bit now that they had returned to her home and native land. Indeed, an old joke came to mind: Canada could have had British culture, French cuisine, and American know-how...but instead ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and French know-how.

  Still, itwas nice to be back.

  Once off the bridge, they were confronted by a row of customs booths. Three of the four that were open had small lineups of cars in front of them; the fourth had a longer queue of trucks. Mary joined the middle car line and waited for the vehicles ahead of them to be dealt with, tapping the steering wheel impatiently with the flat of her left hand.

  At last, it was their turn. Mary pulled up to the booth and rolled down her window. She expected to hear a Canadian customs official’s usual greeting: “Citizenship?” But instead, to her astonishment, the female officer said, “Ms. Vaughan, right?”

  Mary’s heart jumped. She nodded.

  “Pull over up ahead, please.”

  “Is there-is there something wrong?” asked Mary.

  “Just do as I say,” she said to Mary, then picked up a telephone handset.

  Mary felt her palms go moist on the steering wheel as she drove slowly ahead.

  “How’d they know it was you?” asked Louise.

  Mary shook her head. “License plate?”

  “Should we make a run for it?” asked Louise.

  “My name’s Mary, not Thelma. But, Christ, if-“

  A balding customs agent, paunch flopping over his belt, was coming out of the long, low inspection building. He waved for Mary to pull into one of the angled parking spots in front of it. She’d only ever stopped here before to use the public washroom-and then only when desperate; it was rather squalid.

  “Ms. Vaughan? Ms. Mary Vaughan?” said the agent.

  “Yes?”

  “We’ve been waiting for you. My assistant is putting a call through right now.”

  Mary blinked. “For me?”

  “Yes-and it’s an emergency. Come along!”

  Mary got out of the car, and so did Louise. They went into the customs building, and the fat man brought them around behind the counter. He picked up a phone, hit a line key. “I have Ms. Vaughan,” he said into the handset, then he passed it to Mary.

  “This is Mary Vaughan,” she said.

  “Mary!” exclaimed a Jamaican-accented voice.

  “Reuben!” She looked over and saw Louise smile broadly. “What’s up?”

  “God, woman, you need to get a cell phone,” said Reuben. “Look, I know you and Louise are heading to Toronto, but I think you’d better get up here to Sudbury-and fast.”

  “Why?”

  “Your Jock Krieger has gone through the portal.”

  Mary’s heart jumped. “What? But how’d he get up there so quickly?�
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  “He must have flown, and that’s what you should do, too. It’d take six hours to drive up here from where you are. But I’ve gotThe Nickel Pickle waiting for you in St. Catherines.”The Nickel Pickle was Inco’s corporate Learjet, painted dark green on its sides. “I only found out he’d gone over by accident,” continued Reuben. “Saw his name on the mine-site visitors’ log when I was signing somebody else in.”

  “Why didn’t anybody stop him?” asked Mary.

  “Whyshould they have? I checked with the Canadian Forces guys down at the neutrino observatory; they said he had a U.S. diplomatic passport, so they ushered him right through to the other side. Anyway, look, I’ve faxed a map to the customs station, showing how to get to the airfield...”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  “And itisa new era we are entering. The Cenozoic-the era of recent life-is indeed all but over. The Novozoic-the era of new life-is about to begin...”

  “Medical emergency!” snapped Reuben Montego. His shaved black head glistened in the harsh lights of the giant building. “We’re going straight down to the 6800-foot level.”

  The elevator technician nodded. “Right you are, Doc.”

  Mary knew that the cage had been waiting here on the surface in response to a call Reuben had made from his office. The three of them hurried inside, and the technician, who would stay up top, pulled down the heavy cage door. He then gave five blasts on the buzzer-express descent with no stops. The elevator began its drop down a shaft five times as deep as each of the World Trade Center towers had been tall-until, of course, some maleHomo sapiens had destroyed them...

  On the way in, Mary, Louise, and Reuben had grabbed hardhats and mining coats from the racks in the changing area. They struggled to get them on as the elevator made its noisy descent.

  “What sort of police force do they have on the other side?” asked Reuben in his deep, Jamaican-accented voice.