The Neanderthal Parallax, Book One - Hominids

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  By early afternoon, Reuben Montego had good news to report. He’d been talking by phone and e-mail with various experts at LCDC headquarters and the CDC, as well as the hot lab in Winnipeg. “You’ve surely noticed that Ponter doesn’t seem to like grain or dairy products,” said Reuben, sitting now in his living room and drinking the strong-smelling Ethiopian coffee Mary had discovered he liked.

  “Tes,” said Mary, feeling much more comfortable after her shower, even if she did have to put on the same clothes she’d worn the day before. “He loves meat and fresh fruit. But he doesn’t seem to have much interest in traditional from-the-ground crops, bread, or milk.”

  “Right,” said Reuben. “And the people I’ve been talking to tell me that’s very positive for us.”

  “Why?” asked Mary. She couldn’t abide Reuben’s coffee—although they’d asked for some Maxwell House, and, yes, some chocolate milk, to be delivered later that day, along with more clothes. For the moment, she was getting her caffeine from one of his cans of Coke.

  “Because,” said Reuben, “it suggests that Ponter doesn’t come from an agricultural society. What I’ve [256] gathered from Hak more or less confirms that. Ponter’s version of Earth seems to have a much lower population than this one. Consequently, they don’t practice farming or animal husbandry, at least not on anything like the scales we’ve been for the last few thousand years.”

  “I would have thought that you needed those things to support any sort of civilization, no matter what the population,” said Mary.

  Reuben nodded. “I’m looking forward to when Ponter can answer questions about that. Anyway, I’m told that most serious diseases that affect us started in domesticated animals, and then transferred to people. Measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox all came from cattle; the flu came from pigs and ducks; and whooping cough came from pigs and dogs.”

  Mary frowned. Out the window, she could see a helicopter flying by; more reporters. “That’s right, now that I think about it.”

  “And,” continued Reuben, “plaguelike diseases only evolve in areas of high population density, where there are plenty of potential victims. In areas of low density, such disease germs apparently aren’t evolutionarily viable; they kill their own hosts, then have nowhere else to go.”

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right, too,” said Mary.

  “It’s probably too simplistic to say that if Ponter doesn’t come from an agricultural society, then he must come from a hunting-and-gathering one,” said Reuben. “But, still, that does seem the best model, at least from our world, of what Hak has tried to describe. Hunter-gatherer societies do have much lower population densities, and also much less disease.”

  [257] Mary nodded.

  Reuben continued: “I’m told it’s the same principle as with the first European explorers and the Natives here in the Americas. The explorers all came from agricultural, high-density societies, and were lousy with plague germs. The natives were all from low-density societies, with little or no animal husbandry; they didn’t have plague germs of their own, or any of the diseases that transfer from livestock to humans. That’s why the devastation only went one way.”

  “I thought syphilis was brought back to the Old World from the New,” said Mary.

  “Well, yes, there’s some evidence for that,” said Reuben. “But although syphilis perhaps originated in North America, it wasn’t sexually transmitted here. It was only when it got back to Europe that it took up that opportunistic means of transmission and became a major cause of death. In fact, the endemic, nonvenereal form of syphilis still exists, although now its mostly only found among Bedouin tribes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. So, rather than syphilis being a counterexample of the generally one-way course of epidemic disease, it confirms that the development of epidemics requires social conditions typical of overcrowded civilization.”

  Mary digested this for a moment. “So that means you, Louise, and I are probably going to be okay, right?”

  “That seems the most probable interpretation: Ponter is suffering from something he got here, but likely has brought nothing over from his side that we have to worry about.”

  [258] “But what about him? Is Ponter going to be all right?” Reuben shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve given him enough broad-spectrum antibiotics to kill most known bacterial infections, Gram-negative and Gram-positive. Viral infections don’t respond to antibiotics, though, and there’s no such thing as a broad-spectrum antiviral. Unless we actually get evidence that he’s got a specific viral condition, pumping random antivirals into him will probably do more harm than good.” He sounded as frustrated as Mary felt. “There’s really nothing else for us to do now but wait and see.”

  The Exhibitionists swarmed onto the Council-chamber floor, surrounding Adikor Huld and shouting questions at him, like spears being shoved into an ambushed mammoth. “Are you surprised by Adjudicator Sard’s ruling?” asked Lulasm.

  “Who are you going to have speak on your behalf in front of the tribunal?” demanded Hawst.

  “You’ve got a son from generation 148; is he old enough to understand what might happen to you—and to him?” said an Exhibitionist whose name Adikor didn’t know, a 147 who presumably had a younger audience watching him over their Voyeurs.

  Exhibitionists shouted questions at poor Jasmel, too. “Jasmel Ket, how are relations between you and Daklar Bolbay now?” “Do you really believe your father might still be alive?” “If the tribunal does hand down a murder conviction against Scholar Huld, how will you feel about having defended a guilty person?”

  [259] Adikor felt anger growing within him, but he fought, fought, fought to conceal it. He knew the Companion-broadcasts from the Exhibitionists were being monitored by countless people.

  For her part, Jasmel was refusing to respond at all, and the Exhibitionists at last left her alone. Eventually, those grilling Adikor had their fill, and they filed out of the chamber, leaving him and Jasmel alone in the vast room. Jasmel met Adikor’s eyes for a moment, then looked away. Adikor wasn’t sure what to say to her; he’d been adept at reading her father’s moods, but Jasmel had much of Klast in her, too. Finally, to fill the silence between them, Adikor said, “I know you did the best you could.”

  Jasmel looked now at the ceiling, with its painted auroras and centrally mounted timepiece. Then she lowered her gaze, facing Adikor. “Did you do it?” she asked.

  “What?” Adikor’s heart pounded. “No, of course not. I love your father.”

  Jasmel closed her eyes. “I never knew it was you who had tried to kill him before.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill him. I was just angry, that’s all. I thought you understood that; I thought—”

  “You thought because I continued to speak on your behalf that I wasn’t troubled by what I saw? That was my father! I saw him spitting out his own teeth!”

  “It was long ago,” said Adikor, softly. “I, ah, I didn’t remember it as quite so ... so bloody. I am sorry you had to see that.” He paused. “Jasmel, don’t you understand? I love your father; I owe everything that I am to him. After that ... incident ... he could have pressed charges; he could have had me sterilized. But he didn’t. He [260] understood that I had—have—a sickness, an inability sometimes to control my anger. I owe that I am still whole to him; I owe that I have a son, Dab, to him. My overwhelming feeling toward your father is gratitude. I would never hurt him. I couldn’t.”

  “Maybe you got tired of being in his debt.”

  “There was no debt. You’re still young, Jasmel, and you haven’t yet bonded, but soon you will, I know. There is no debt between people who are in love; there is only total forgiveness, and going forward.”

  “People don’t change,” said Jasmel.

  “Yes, they do. I did. And your father knew that.”

  Jasmel was quiet for a long time, then: “Who are you going to have speak for you this time?”

/>   Adikor had just ignored the question when it had been shouted at him by the Exhibitionists. But now he gave it serious thought. “Lurt is the natural choice,” he said. “She’s a 145, old enough that the adjudicators should respect her. And she said she’d do anything to help.”

  “I hope ...” said Jasmel. She continued again a moment later. “I hope she does well for you.”

  “Thank you. What are you going to do now?”

  Jasmel looked directly at Adikor. “For now—for right now—I just need to get away from here ... and from you.”

  She turned and walked out of the massive Council chamber, leaving Adikor all alone.

  Chapter Thirty

  DAY FIVE

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 6

  148/118/28

  NEWS SEARCH

  Keyword(s): Neanderthal

  An Islamic spiritual leader has denounced the so-called Neanderthal man as clearly the botched product of Western genetic-engineering experiments. The Wilayat al-Faqih in Iran is calling on the Canadian government to admit that Ponter Boddit is the product of a wickedly immoral recombinant-DNA procedure ...

  Ottawa is being pressured to grant Canadian citizenship to Ponter Boddit—and the request is coming from an unusual source. U.S. president George W. Bush today asked Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to expedite the process by which the Neanderthal is made an official Canadian. Ponter Boddit has indicated that he was born in a location corresponding to Sudbury, Ontario, in his world. “If he was born in Canada,” says Bush, “then he’s a Canadian.”

  The U.S. president is pushing for Boddit to be issued a Canadian passport so the Neanderthal can travel freely to the United States once the quarantine is lifted, thereby ending the debate on Capitol Hill about whether he could be allowed through U.S. Customs.

  Section 5, Paragraph 4, of the Canadian Citizenship Act gives broad discretion, which Bush is urging be invoked: “In order to alleviate cases of special and unusual hardship or to reward [262] services of an exceptional value to Canada, and notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the Governor in Council may, in his discretion, direct the Minister to grant citizenship to any person …”

  An Internet petition with more than 10,000 names gathered worldwide has been forwarded to Canada’s Minister of Health, demanding that Ponter Boddit be permanently quarantined ...

  Inco shares closed today at a fifty-two-week high ...

  “It’s a media circus,” said long-time Sudbury Rotarian Bernie Monks. “Northern Ontario hasn’t seen anything like this since the Dionne Quintuplets were born, back in 1934 ...”

  Job offers continue to pour in for Ponter Boddit. Japan’s NTT Basic Research Laboratory has offered him a directorship of a new quantum-computing unit. Microsoft and IBM have also offered him contracts, with generous cash/stock packages. MIT, CalTech, and eight other universities have offered him faculty positions. The RAND Corporation has likewise made an overture to him, as has Greenpeace. No word yet from the Neanderthal about whether any of these positions appeal to him ...

  A coalition of scientists in France has issued a statement saying that although Ponter Boddit’s arrival on this Earth did indeed take place on Canadian soil, he clearly was not born in that nation, and no Neanderthaler ever lived in North America. His citizenship, they contend, should therefore be French, since the youngest Neanderthal fossils are found in that country ...

  Civil-rights advocates on both sides of the border are condemning the forced quarantine of the so-called Neanderthal man, saying there is no evidence he poses a medical threat to anyone ...

  Blood test after blood test came back negative. Whatever Ponter had been suffering from seemed to have abated, and there was no evidence that he was carrying anything dangerous to the humans of this world. Still, the LCDC wasn’t ready to cancel the quarantine yet.

  Ponter was wearing his own shirt again today, the one [263] he’d had on when he arrived here. The RCMP had delivered a small wardrobe of additional clothes for him bought at the local Mark’s Work Wearhouse, but they really didn’t fit very well; clothing didn’t seem to come off the rack for a person who looked like a slightly squished version of Mr. Universe.

  Ponter’s—or Hak’s—English was getting remarkably good. The Companion didn’t have the ee phoneme in its preprogrammed repertoire, but it had now recorded both Mary and Reuben saying that sound, and would play back the appropriate version as required to render English words it otherwise couldn’t articulate. But it sounded funny hearing her name said as “Mare-ee,” half in one of Hak’s voices and half in either her own or Reuben’s, so Mary told the Companion not to bother; people periodically called her “Mare,” anyway, and it would be just fine for Hak to continue to do that, too. Louise likewise told Hak it was all right if the Companion went on referring to her as just “Lou.”

  Finally, Hak announced that it had amassed a sufficient vocabulary for truly meaningful conversations. Yes, it said, there would be gaps and difficulties, but these could be worked out as they went along.

  And so, while Reuben was busy going over more test results on the phone with other doctors, and while Louise, the night owl, was sleeping upstairs, having accepted Ponter’s offer to use the bed when he wasn’t, Mary and Ponter sat in the living room and had their first real chat. Ponter spoke softly, making sounds in his own language, and Hak, using its male voice, provided an English translation: “It is good to talk.”

  [264] Mary made a small, nervous laugh. She’d been frustrated by her inability to communicate with Ponter, and now that they could talk, she didn’t know what to say to him. “Yes,” she said. “It’s good to talk.”

  “A beautiful day,” said Ponter’s translated voice, looking out the living room’s rear window.

  Mary laughed again; heartily, this time. Talking about the weather—a pleasantry that transcended species boundaries. “Yes, it is.”

  And then she realized that it wasn’t that she didn’t know what to say to Ponter. Rather, she had so many questions, she didn’t know where to begin. Ponter was a scientist; he must have some sense of what his people knew about genetics, about the split between genus Homo and genus Pan, about ...

  But no. No. Ponter was a person—first and foremost, he was a person, and one who had gone through a harrowing ordeal. The science could wait. Right now, they would talk about him, about how he was doing. “How do you feel?” Mary asked.

  “I am fine,” said the translated voice.

  Mary smiled. “I mean really. How are you really doing?”

  Ponter seemed to hesitate, and Mary wondered if Neanderthal men shared with males of her kind a reluctance to talk about feelings. But then he exhaled through his mouth, a long, shuddering sigh.

  “I am frightened,” he said. “And I miss my family.”

  Mary lifted her eyebrows. “Your family?”

  “My daughters,” he said. “I have two daughters, Jasmel Ket and Megameg Bek.”

  Mary’s jaw dropped slightly. It hadn’t even occurred to [265] her to think about Ponter’s family. “How old are they?”

  “The older one,” said Ponter, “is—I know in months, but you reckon time mostly in years, do you not? The older one is—Hak?”

  Hak’s female voice chimed in. “Jasmel is nineteen years old; Megameg is nine.”

  “My goodness,” said Mary. “Will they be okay? What about their mother?”

  “Klast died two tenmonths ago,” said Ponter.

  “Twenty months,” added Hak, helpfully. “One-point-eight years.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mary softly.

  Ponter nodded slightly. “Her cells, in her blood, they changed ...”

  “Leukemia,” Mary said, providing the word.

  “I miss her every month,” said Ponter.

  Mary wondered for a moment if Hak had translated that just right; surely Ponter meant he missed her every day. “To have lost both parents ...”

  “Yes,” said Ponter. “Of course, Jasmel is an adult now, so ...”<
br />
  “So she can vote, and so forth?” asked Mary.

  “No, no, no. Did Hak do the math incorrectly?”

  “I most certainly did not,” said Hak’s female voice.

  “Jasmel is far too young to vote,” said Ponter. “I am far too young to vote.”

  “How old do you have to be in your world to vote?”

  “You must have seen at least 667 moons—two-thirds of the traditional thousand-month lifetime.”

  Hak, evidently wanting to dispel the notion that it was mathematically challenged, quickly supplied the [266] conversions: “One can vote at the age of fifty-one years; a traditional lifespan averaged seventy-seven years, although many live much longer than that these days.”

  “Here, in Ontario, people get to vote when they turn eighteen,” said Mary. “Years, that is.”

  “Eighteen!” exclaimed Ponter. “That is madness.”

  “I don’t know of any place where the voting age is higher than twenty-one years.”

  “This explains much about your world,” says Ponter. “We do not let people shape policy until they have accumulated wisdom and experience.”

  “But then if Jasmel can’t vote, what is it that makes her an adult?”

  Ponter lifted his shoulders slightly. “I suppose such distinctions are not as significant on my world as they are here. Still, at 250 months, an individual does take legal responsibility for himself or herself, and usually is on the verge of establishing his or her own home.” He shook his head. “I wish I could let Jasmel and Megameg know that I am still alive, and am thinking about them. Even if there is no way I can go home, I would give anything just to get a message to them.”

  “And is there really no way for you to go home?” asked Mary.