Hybrids (12 page)

Finally, it was time! Two had become One again. Mary and dozens of other females were waiting in an open field for the men to show up. Lurt was there, along with young Dab, her son by Adikor. Jasmel, Ponter’s elder daughter, was there, too, but she was really waiting, Mary knew, for her own man-mate, Tryon. Mega, Ponter’s younger daughter, was also there, and Mary stood next to her, holding her small hand. Mary was relieved that there was no sign of Daklar Bolbay, young Mega’s guardian; that woman had made enough trouble for Mary, Ponter, and Adikor as it was.

At last the right hover-bus arrived. Ponter and Adikor came out, and Mary rushed to her man. They hugged and licked each other’s faces. Ponter then hugged both his daughters, and lifted Mega up on his shoulders. Adikor, meanwhile, had already disappeared with his woman-mate and son.

Ponter had brought the trapezoidal suitcase he usually took on trips to the other Earth. Mary carried it, while he carried Mega.

They had agreed in another chat over linked Companions to go looking for Vissan on the third of the four days of the Two-becoming-One holiday, since the forecast was for rain in Saldak then but clear skies in Kraldak.

And so on this morning, Mary, Ponter, and Mega had a fabulous time together. Although it was getting chilly, and the trees had all changed color, the air was still crisp and clean. After lunch, Mega had gone off to play with friends, and Mary and Ponter retired to the house Mary shared with Bandra. Neanderthals were open about sex, but Mary still wasn’t comfortable making love knowing that there was anyone else at home. Fortunately, Bandra had said she would be away until evening with her own man-mate, Harb. And so Ponter and Mary had the run of the place.

The sex, as always, was fabulous, with Mary climaxing repeatedly. When they were done, they bathed together, each lovingly cleaning the other. Then they lay on the pile of cushions, just chatting and holding each other. Mary wasn’t used to the sound of Ponter speaking with contractions, but of course he was, since Christine was now doing the translating instead of Hak.

Mary and Ponter spent most of the afternoon cuddling and touching and talking and walking, just enjoying each other’s company. They took in a short comedic play—the Neanderthals loved live theater. Electric fans at the back of the stage blew the performers’ pheromones onto the audience while clearing the audience’s own out of the room.

Then they enjoyed a Neanderthal board game called
partanlar
that was something like a cross between chess and checkers: the playing pieces were all identical, but how they could move depended upon which squares on the hundred-position grid they landed upon.

Later, they ate at a restaurant run by two old women whose man-mates were no more, enjoying delicious venison, wonderful salads of pine nuts and fern leaves, fried tubers, and boiled duck’s eggs. There, they sat side by side on a padded couch in the restaurant’s rear, wearing Neanderthal dining gloves and taking turns feeding each other.

“I love you,” said Mary, nestling against Ponter.

“And I love you,” Ponter replied. “I love you so very much.”

“I wish…I wish Two could always be One,” said Mary.

“When I am with you, I wish it would never end, either,” said Ponter, stroking Mary’s hair.

“But it must,” said Mary with a sigh. “I don’t know that I’ll ever fit in here.”

“There are no perfect solutions,” said Ponter, “but you could…”

Mary sat up and turned to face him. “What?”

“You could go back to your world.”

Mary felt her heart sink. “Ponter, I—”

“For twenty-five days a month. And you come back here when Two become One. I promise that each time you do, I will give you the four most loving, fun-filled, passionately sexual days possible.”

“I—” Mary frowned. She’d been looking for a solution that would see the two of them together constantly. But it did seem as if that wasn’t possible. Still: “The commute between Toronto and Sudbury would be awkward,” said Mary, “not to mention the decontamination procedures going each way, but…”

“You forget who you are,” said Ponter.

“I…I beg your pardon?”

“You are Mare Vaughan.”

“Yes?”

“You are
the
Mare Vaughan. Any academy—excuse me, any
university
—would love to have you on staff.”

“Well, and that’s another problem. I can’t possibly get four days off in a row every month.”

“Again, you underestimate yourself.”

“How?”

“Do I understand your academic schedules correctly? You are in session for eight months a year.”

“September to April, yes. Autumn to spring.”

“So four or five occurrences of Two becoming One will happen when you’re not obligated to the university. Of the remaining eight, a goodly number will partially fall on those first and last days of your seven-day clusters during which you do not work.”

“Still…”

“Still, there would be days you would have to miss being at the university.”

“Exactly. And no one is going to understand that—”

“Forgive me, beloved, but
everyone
is going to understand. Even before this visit, but especially now, you know more not just about the genetics of Neanderthals than any other Gliksin, but you also know more of what Neanderthals
know of
genetics than any other Gliksin. You would be an asset to any university, and if a few accommodations have to be made to your special needs, I’m sure that could be arranged.”

“I think you’re underestimating the difficulties.”

“Am I? The way to find out is to try.”

Mary pursed her lips, thinking. He was right; it certainly couldn’t hurt to ask. “Still, it takes most of a day to get from Toronto to Sudbury, especially once you add the time getting down to the portal onto the car trip. Four days could easily become six.”

“If you went back to living in Toronto, yes. But why not make your contribution at Laurentian University in Sudbury? They already know you there from the work you did during my first visit to your world.”

“Laurentian,” said Mary, tasting the word, tasting the idea. It was a lovely, small university, with a first-rate genetics department, and it did all that fascinating forensic work—

Forensics.

The rape. The goddamned rape.

Mary doubted she’d ever be comfortable working at Toronto’s York University again. Not only would she have to face Cornelius Ruskin, but she would also have to work side by side with Qaiser Remtulla, the other woman who had been raped by Ruskin, a rape that might have been prevented if Mary had reported the attack on herself. Every time she thought of Qaiser, Mary was wracked with guilt; working with her would be devastating—and working with Cornelius would be terrifying.

There
was
a certain elegance to what Ponter was proposing.

Teaching genetics at Laurentian…

Living just a short drive from the Creighton Mine, the threshold to the original interuniversal portal…

And spending even just four days a month with Ponter would be more wonderful, more fabulous, than a 24/7 relationship with any other man she could imagine…

“But what…what about generation 149? What about our child? I couldn’t bear to see my baby only once a month.”

“In our culture, children live with their female parents.”

“But only until they’re ten, if they’re male. Then, like Dab will soon, they go live with their fathers. I wouldn’t be able to let my child leave me after only a decade.”

Ponter nodded. “Whatever solution we find to allowing us to have a child will require manipulation of chromosomes. Surely, in that process, it’s a trivial matter to make sure our child is female. Such a child would live with her mother until she reached her two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth month—over eighteen of your years. Isn’t that a typical age for children to stay with their parents, even in your world?”

Mary’s head was spinning. “You are a brilliant man, Scholar Boddit,” she said, at last.

“I do my best, Scholar Vaughan.”

“It’s not a perfect solution.”

“Such things are rare,” said Ponter.

Mary thought about that, then snuggled closer to Ponter and gave the left side of his face a long, slow lick. “You know,” she said, pressing her face into his furry cheek, “it might just work.”

After they left the restaurant, Mary and Ponter rendezvoused with Mega, and spent a while playing with her. But soon it was her bedtime, and Mega went home to the house she shared with her
tabant
, Daklar Bolbay—which made Mary think of a brilliant idea: she and Ponter could go back to
Ponter’s
house for the night, out at the Rim. After all, Adikor would not be there, and it would let Bandra and Harb have Bandra’s house to themselves. Ponter was startled by the suggestion—it simply wasn’t normal for a woman to come to a man’s house, although, of course, Mary had been to Ponter’s a couple of times now—but after Mary explained her apprehension about making love with someone else at home, Ponter quickly agreed, and they summoned a travel cube to take them out to the Rim.

After some more wonderful sex, Mary was lounging in the circular, recessed bathtub, and Ponter was sitting in a chair. He was pretending to read something on a datapad, but Mary noticed his eyes weren’t tracking left to right—or right to left, for that matter. Pabo was napping quietly by her master’s feet.

Ponter’s posture was somewhat different from what a
Homo sapiens
male would display: although he had a long (albeit chinless) jaw, he didn’t prop it up with a crooked arm. Of course, the proportions of his arms weren’t quite normal. No, damn it, no; “normal” was the wrong word. Still, maybe it wasn’t comfortable for him to assume the classic Rodin “Thinker” pose. Or—why hadn’t Mary noticed this before? Ponter’s occipital bun gave extra weight to the rear of his head, perfectly counterbalancing his heavy face. Perhaps, when brooding, he didn’t prop up his head because there was no need to.

Still, brooding was unquestionably what Ponter was doing.

Mary got out of the tub and toweled off, then, still naked, made her way across the room and perched herself on the broad arm of his chair. “A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

Ponter frowned. “I doubt they are worth that much.”

Mary smiled and stroked his muscular upper arm. “You’re upset about something.”

“Upset?” said Ponter, trying on the word. “No. No, that’s not it. I’m simply wondering about something.”

Mary moved her arm around Ponter’s broad shoulders. “Something to do with me?”

“In part, yes.”

“Ponter,” she said, “we decided to try to make this—this
relationship
of ours—work. But the only way we can do that is if we communicate.”

Ponter looked downright apprehensive, Mary thought, and his face seemed to convey a plaintive
Don’t you think I know that?

“Well?” said Mary.

“Remember Veronica Shannon?”

“Of course. The woman at Laurentian.” The woman who made Mary Vaughan see the Virgin Mary.

“There is an…an
implication
in her work,” said Ponter. “She has identified the suite of structures in the
Homo sapiens
brain that are responsible for religious impulses.”

Mary took a deep breath. She certainly hadn’t been comfortable with that notion, but the scientist in her couldn’t ignore what Veronica had apparently demonstrated. Still, “I suppose,” is all Mary said, releasing the air she’d taken in.

“Well, if we know what
causes
religion,” said Ponter, “then…”

“Then what?” said Mary.

“Then perhaps we could cure it.”

Mary felt her heart jump, and she thought she was going to tumble backward off the chair’s arm. “Cure it,” she repeated, as if hearing the words in her own voice would somehow make them more palatable. “Ponter, you can’t
cure
religion. It’s not a disease.”

Ponter said nothing, but looking down on his head from her perch on the chair’s arm, Mary saw his eyebrow roll up onto his ridge as if to say,
Isn’t it?

Mary decided to speak before Ponter filled the void with more things she did not want to hear. “Ponter, it’s part of who I am.”

“But it’s the cause of so much evil in your world.”

“And of much greatness, too,” Mary said.

Ponter tilted his head and turned it sideways so that he could look at her. “You asked me to speak. I was content to keep these thoughts private.”

Mary frowned. If he’d been keeping them totally private, she never would have asked him what was wrong.

Ponter went on: “It should be possible to determine what mutation caused this in Gliksins.”

Mutation.
Religion as a mutation. Sweet Jesus. “How do you know that it’s my people who’ve mutated? Maybe ours is the normal state, the ancestral state, and your people are the mutants.”

But Ponter simply shrugged. “Perhaps we are. If so, it wouldn’t be…”

But Mary finished his thought for him, her tone betraying her bitterness. “It wouldn’t be the only improvement since
neanderthalensis
and
sapiens
split.”

“Mare…” said Ponter gently.

But Mary wasn’t going to let it go. “See! You don’t have the vocal range we do!
We’re
the more advanced state.”

Ponter opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it, his thought unspoken. But Mary knew what it probably was: the perfect rejoinder to her comment about vocal range, the fact that Gliksins could choke to death while drinking whereas Neanderthals could not.

“I’m sorry,” said Mary. She moved over to Ponter’s chair, sitting this time in his lap, draping her arms around his shoulders. “I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Of course,” said Ponter.

“It’s just a difficult notion for me. Surely you can understand that. Religion as an accidental mutation. Religion as a detriment. My beliefs as merely a biological response with no basis in any higher reality.”

“I can’t say I understand, for I don’t. I’ve never believed anything in defiance of evidence to the contrary. But…”

“But?”

Ponter fell silent again, and Mary shifted in his lap, leaning back a bit so that she could study his broad, round, bearded face. There was such intelligence in his golden eyes, such kindness.

“Ponter, I’m sorry I reacted the way I did. The last thing I want you to do is clam up—feel intimidated about speaking openly to me. Please, tell me what you were going to say.”

Ponter took a deep breath, and when he did that, it was enough to make Mary feel a breeze. “Remember I told you I had seen a personality sculptor.”

Mary nodded curtly. “About my rape. Yes.”

“That was the proximate cause of my visits to the sculptor, but other…other things, other matters…”

“We call them
issues
,” said Mary.

“Ah. It turned out I had some other issues to resolve.”

“And?”

Ponter moved in the chair, shifting both himself and Mary with ease. “The personality sculptor is named Jurard Selgan,” said Ponter. An irrelevancy, buying time as he composed his thoughts. “Selgan had a hypothesis about…”

“Yes?”

Ponter shrugged slightly. “About my attraction to you.”

Mary felt her back stiffen. It was bad enough that she was apparently the cause of Ponter’s problems—but to be the subject of theories by someone she’d never met! Her voice was Pleistocene in its coldness. “And what was his hypothesis?”

“You know my woman-mate Klast died of cancer of the blood.”

Mary nodded.

“And so she is no more. Completely and totally devoid of any further existence.”

“Like those commemorated at the Vietnam veterans’ wall,” said Mary, remembering their trip to Washington, and the point Ponter had made so vigorously there.

“Exactly!” said Ponter. “Exactly!”

Mary nodded as she felt pieces fall together in her mind. “You were upset that people at the Vietnam wall were taking comfort in the notion that their loved ones might still exist in some form.”

“
Ka,
” said Ponter softly; Christine didn’t bother translating the Neanderthal word for “yes” if that was all a Barast said.

Mary nodded again. “You were…you were
jealous
of them, of the comfort they had, despite their tragic loss. The comfort that you were denied because you don’t believe in heaven or an afterlife.”

“
Ka,
” Ponter said again. But, after a long pause, he continued, with Christine translating: “But Selgan and I didn’t speak of my visit to Washington.”

“Then what?” asked Mary.

“He suggested that…that my attraction to you…”

“Yes?”

Ponter tipped his head up, looking at the ceiling with its painted mural. “I said before that I had never believed anything in defiance of evidence to the contrary. The same might be said about believing things in the
absence
of any evidence. But Selgan suggested that perhaps I
did
believe you when you said you had a soul, when you said you would continue to exist in some form, even after death.”

Mary drew her eyebrows together and tilted her head to one side, absolutely baffled. “Yes?”

“He…he…” Ponter seemed unable to go on. At last, he simply lifted his left forearm and said, “Hak?”

Hak took over, speaking directly in English. “Do not feel inadequate, Mare,” the Companion said. “Ponter himself could not see this, either, although it was obvious to Scholar Selgan…and to me, as well.”

“What?” said Mary, her heart pounding.

“It is conceivable,” continued the Companion, “that if you were to die, Ponter might not feel the grief as sharply as he did when Klast died—not because he loves you less, but because he might assuage his feelings with the belief that you still existed in some form.”

Mary felt her whole body sag. If Ponter’s arms hadn’t been encircling her waist, she would have fallen off his lap. “My…God,” she said. Her head was swimming; she had no idea what to think.

“I don’t accept that Selgan is correct,” said Ponter, “but…”

Mary nodded slightly. “But you are a scientist, and it
is
…” She paused, considering; a belief in an afterlife did allow such consolation. “It
is
an interesting hypothesis.”

“
Ka,
” said Ponter.

Ka
, indeed.