Hominids

And, yet, she’d spent her life surrounded by good, decent men. Her father; her two brothers; so many supportive colleagues; Father Caldicott, and Father Belfontaine before him; many good friends; a handful of lovers.

What proportion of men really were the problem? What fraction were violent, angry, unable to control their emotions, unable to resist their impulses? Was it so vast a group that it couldn’t have been—“cleansed” was Ponter’s word, a nurturing word, a hopeful word—from the gene pool generations ago?

No matter how large or how small the population of violent males was, thought Mary, there were too many. Even one such beast would be too many, and—

And here she was, thinking like Ponter’s people. The gene pool could indeed use a good cleansing, a therapeutic purging.

Yes, it surely could.

Chapter 34

Adikor Huld lay in his bed, flush with the ground, staring up at the timepiece mounted on the ceiling. The sun had been up for several daytenths now, but he couldn’t see any reason to rise.

What had happened that day, down in the quantum-computing lab? What had gone wrong?

Ponter hadn’t been vaporized; he wasn’t consumed by flame; he didn’t explode. All those things would have left abundant traces.

No, if he was right, Ponter had been transferred to another universe … but …

But that sounded outlandish even to him; he understood how outrageous it must have seemed to Adjudicator Sard. And yet, what other explanation was there?

Ponter had disappeared.

And a large quantity of heavy water had appeared in his place.

Presumably, thought Adikor, it had been an even exchange—identical masses transposed, but radically different volumes. After all, it wasn’t just Ponter that had disappeared; Adikor had heard the air rushing out of the quantum-computing chamber, as if all of it, too, had been shunted to another place. But even a room’s worth of air had little mass, whereas liquid water—even liquid heavy water—was in the most dense state of that substance, more dense even than the solid, frozen variety.

So: a large volume of air and one man had disappeared from this universe, and an identical mass, but much smaller volume, of heavy water had come through to replace it from … from the other side; it was the phraseology that kept coming to Adikor’s mind.

But …

But then that meant that there was heavy water at this location in the other universe. And pure heavy water did not occur naturally.

Which meant the … the portal, another word that came unbidden … must have opened into a storage tank for heavy water. And if heavy water was transferred from there to here, then Ponter was transferred from here to there, meaning …

Meaning he’d quite likely drowned.

Tears filled Adikor’s deep eye sockets, like rainwater gathering in wells.

Ponter shifted on the couch and looked again at Mary. “The alibi archives do not just solve crimes,” he said. “They have many other uses. For instance, I saw on television yesterday that two campers were lost in Algonquin Park.”

Mary nodded.

“Being lost like that is impossible in my world. Your Companion triangulates on signals from various mountain-top transmitters to pinpoint your position, and if you are injured or trapped by a rockfall or something, it is easy for the rescue teams to home in on your Companion.” He raised a hand, copying what Mary had done earlier, forestalling the objection he presumably saw coming. “Of course, only an adjudicator can order that you be tracked like that, and only when you request it by sending an emergency signal, or when a family member asks for it.”

Headlines she’d seen all too frequently swirled through Mary’s mind. “Police abandon search.”

“Hunt for missing girl called off.”

“Avalanche victims presumed dead.”

“I guess an emergency signal like that would be useful,” Mary said.

“It is,” replied Ponter firmly. “And the Companion can issue the signal automatically, if you yourself are unable to. It monitors vital signs, and if you have a heart attack—or even are about to have a heart attack—it can summon aid.”

Mary felt a twinge. Her own father had died of a heart attack, alone, when Mary had been eighteen. She’d found his body upon arriving home from school one day.

Ponter evidently mistook the sadness on Mary’s face for continuing dubiousness. “And just a month before I came here, I misplaced a rain shield that I was very fond of; it had been a gift from Jasmel. I would have been”—bleep; devastated?—“had it been lost for good. But I simply visited the archive pavilion where my recordings are stored, and reviewed the last day’s events. I saw exactly where I lost the shield and was able to retrieve it.”

Mary certainly resented the countless hours she’d spent looking for misplaced books and student papers and business cards and house keys and coupons that were about to expire. Maybe you’d resent that even more if you were sure your existence was finite; maybe that knowledge would drive you to do something to avoid such wastes of time. “A personal black box,” Mary said, really to herself, but Ponter responded.

“Actually, the recording material is mostly pink. We use reprocessed granite.”

Mary smiled. “No, no. A black box is what we call a flight recorder: a device aboard an airplane that keeps track of telemetry and cockpit chatter, in case there’s a crash. But the idea of having my own black box had never occurred to me.” She paused. “How are the pictures taken, then?” Mary glanced down at Ponter’s wrist. “Is there a lens on your Companion?”

“Yes, but it is only used to zoom in on things outside the Companion’s normal recording space. The Companion uses sensor fields to record everything surrounding the person, and the person himself, as well.” Ponter made the deep sound that was his chuckle. “After all, it would not be much good if we only recorded what was visible from the Companion’s lens: lots of images of my left thigh or the inside of my hip pouch. This way, when playing back my archive, I can actually view myself from a short distance away.”

“Amazing,” said Mary. “We have nothing like that.”

“But I have seen products of your science, your industry,” said Ponter. “Surely, if you had made it a priority to develop such technology …”

Mary frowned. “Well, I suppose. I mean, we went from putting the first object in space to the first man on the moon in less than twelve years, and—”

“Say that again.”

“I said, when we wanted badly enough to put somebody on the moon—”

“The moon,” repeated Ponter. “You mean Earth’s moon?”

Mary blinked. “Uh-huh.”

“But … but … that is fantastic,” Ponter said. “We have never done such a thing.”

“You’ve never been to the moon? I don’t mean you personally; I mean your people. No Neanderthal has ever been to the moon?”

Ponter’s eyes were wide. “No.”

“What about Mars or the other planets?”

“No.”

“Do you have satellites?”

“No, just one, like here.”

“No, I mean artificial satellites. Unma

“No,” said Ponter. “We have nothing like that.”

Mary thought for a moment. Without the legacy of the V-2, without the missiles of the Second World War, would humans here have been able to send anything into orbit? “We’ve launched—well, I don’t know—many hundreds of things into space.”

Ponter looked up, as if trying to visualize Luna’s scowling face through the ceiling of Reuben’s house. “How many live on the moon now?”

“None,” said Mary, surprised.