She saw him stiffen slightly in the strobing light. She didn’t find him ugly—not anymore, not now. She found his face kind and thoughtful and compassionate and intelligent and, yes, dammit, yes—attractive. But what she’d said had come out all wrong, and now, in trying to explain so his feelings wouldn’t be bruised, so he wouldn’t be left wondering forevermore why she’d responded the way she had to his soft touch when they were stargazing, she’d ended up hurting him.
“I mean,” said Mary, “that there’s nothing wrong with your appearance. In fact, I find you quite”—she hesitated, although not from lack of conviction, but rather because so rarely in her life had she ever been so forward with any man—“handsome.”
Ponter made a sad little smile. “I am not, you know. Handsome, I mean. Not by the standards of my people.”
[410] “I don’t care,” said Mary at once. “I don’t care at all. I mean, I can’t imagine you found me attractive physically, either. I’m ...” She lowered her voice. “I’m what they call plain, I guess. I don’t turn a lot of heads, but—”
“I find you very striking,” said Ponter.
“If we’d had more time,” said Mary. “If I’d had more time, you know, to get over it”—not, Mary was sure, that she ever would—“things ... things might have been different between us.” She lifted her shoulders a bit, a helpless shrug. “That’s all. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to understand that I did—do—like you.”
A crazy thought ran through her head. Had things indeed been different—had she come up to Sudbury a whole person, instead of shattered inside, maybe now Ponter wouldn’t be rushing as fast as he could to return to his old life, his own world. Maybe ...
No. No, that was too much. He had Adikor. He had children.
And, anyway, if things had been different, maybe she would be getting ready to go with him, through the portal, to his world. After all, she had no one here, and—
But things were not different. Things were precisely as they were.
The lift shuddered to a halt, and the buzzer made its raucous call, signaling the opening of the cage door.
Chapter Forty-five
Suddenly there was considerable commotion among the Gliksins. At first, Adikor couldn’t tell what was going on, but then he realized someone was coming down into the barrel-shaped chamber, descending the same long ladder they’d seen before. The person’s broad back was facing the robot’s eye; presumably, it was a Gliksin leader, come to make an assessment of this strange contraption, that—if the effect was mirrored on the other side—appeared to be attached to a cable that was protruding from thin air.
The Gliksins visible in the foreground were beckoning for the newcomer to approach. And he did, running quite fast. The robot was swinging at the end of its tether, as Dern hauled it higher and higher, but then Adikor caught a glimpse on the monitor of the face of the person who had just arrived.
Yes! Incredibly, wonderfully yes!
Adikor’s heart was pounding. It was Ponter! He was clad in the strange clothing of the Gliksins, and wearing one of those plastic turtle shells on top of his head, but there could be no doubt. Ponter Boddit was alive and well!
“Dern!” shouted Adikor. “Stop! Let the robot back down!”
[412] The camera’s perspective started lowering on the screen, Jasmel gasped and clapped her hands together with glee. Adikor wiped tears from his eyes.
Ponter hurried over to the robot. He bent his head oddly, and it took Adikor a moment to realize what Ponter was likely doing: looking at the manufacturer’s contribution stamp on the robot’s frame, confirming for himself that this really was an artifact from his own world. Ponter then looked up into the robot’s camera lens, grinning widely.
“Hello,” said Ponter—the first word out of the cacophony that Adikor had understood. “Hello, my friends! I’d thought I’d lost you forever! Who’s looking at this, I wonder? Adikor, no doubt. How I’ve missed you!”
He paused, then two of the Gliksins spoke to him: one of the light-skinned ones and the dark-skinned man who had been holding on to the robot earlier.
Ponter turned back to the camera. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. I see the cable coming out of the air, but is it safe for me to cross back over? Can”—his voice caught for a moment—“can I come home?”
Adikor turned away from the screen and looked at Dern, who had returned to the control room. Dern lifted his shoulders. “The robot seemed to come through just fine.”
“You don’t know how long you’ll be able to keep the gate open,” said Jasmel, “or whether you’ll ever be able to establish it again if it closes. He should come through right now.”
Adikor nodded. “But how do we let him know that?”
Jasmel said decisively, “I know how.” She hurried down [413] the steps onto the computing floor, then strode over to where the cable disappeared into the hole in the air. Jasmel placed her hand on the cable, then slid her grip along the cable’s length until her fingertips, then her whole fingers, then her hand, then her forearm disappeared. When everything up to her shoulder was projecting through, she shoved her head over into the other side, and simply shouted out—Adikor and Dern could hear it, but it came entirely from the speaker on the monitor; there was no sound at all coming from the computing floor—“Daddy! Come home!”
“Jasmel, sweetheart!” shouted Ponter, looking up. “I—”
“Come right now!” Jasmel replied. “There’s no telling how long we can keep this open. Just follow the cable—use that ladder, there, to get up here. The computing-room floor is about half an armspan below where my head is; you should have no trouble finding it.”
Jasmel then pulled her head back over to her side and ran over and up into the control room.
There was a flurry of activity visible on the monitor; it was clear no one was quite prepared for this. Two men went to get the ladder Jasmel had indicated. One of the men gave Ponter a great hug, which Ponter enthusiastically returned—it seemed that he hadn’t been mistreated by the Gliksins.
And now a yellow-haired woman had appeared next to Ponter; she hadn’t been there before, and she looked quite winded. She stood on her toes and pressed her lips against Ponter’s cheek; he smiled broadly in return.
The robot swiveled its camera under Dern’s command, and Adikor saw that the problem was more difficult than [414] Jasmel had thought. Yes, the cable was protruding from a hole—but that hole was nowhere near any part of the cavern’s rocky walls. Rather, it was in the middle of the air, several body-lengths above the ground, and at least that far from the closest wall. There was nothing to lean the ladder against.
“Could he climb the cable?” asked Adikor.
Dern shrugged. “He outweighs the robot, I’m sure. It might hold him, but ...”
But if it snapped, Ponter would crash down to the rock floor, possibly breaking his back.
“Can we get a stronger cable through to him?” asked Jasmel.
“If we had a stronger cable,” said Dern, nodding. “But I’ve no idea where to get one down here; I’d have to go up to my workshop on the surface, and that’d take too long.”
But the Gliksins, puny though they might be, were resourceful. Four of them were now holding the base of the ladder, steadying it with all their strength. It wasn’t leaning against anything, but they were shouting at Ponter, presumably urging him to try climbing it anyway.
Ponter ran over to the ladder, and was about to step onto the first rung, even though it was still none too steady. Suddenly, the yellow-haired woman ran up to him, and touched his arm. He turned, and his eyebrow rolled up his browridge in surprise. She pressed something into his other hand and stretched up to place her face against Ponter’s cheek again. He smiled once more, then began climbing the ladder the Gliksins were holding on to.
The ladder swung more and more the higher Ponter [415] got, and Adikor’s heart jumped as it looked like it was going to come crashing down, but more Gliksins
rushed to help, and the ladder was straightened again, and Ponter started reaching out with his hand, trying to grab the cable just shy of where it protruded from the midair hole. The ladder swung back, forth, left, right, and Ponter grabbed, missed, grabbed again, missed once more, and then—
Dern’s control box jerked forward slightly. Ponter had the cable!
Adikor, Jasmel, and Dern rushed down onto the computing floor. Jasmel and Dern had taken positions directly in front of the opening, and Adikor, looking to see if there was something he could do to help, moved behind the opening, and—
Adikor gasped.
He saw Ponter’s head appear from nowhere, and, from this rear angle, Adikor could see into his neck as if it had been chopped clean through by some massive blade. Dern and Jasmel were helping pull Ponter in now, but Adikor watched, stunned, as more and more of his beloved emerged through the widening hole that hugged his contours—and as the slice through him worked its way down his body, now revealing cross sections through his shoulders; now through his chest with beating heart and inflating lungs; now through his guts; now through his legs; and—
And he was through! All of him was through!
Adikor rushed around to Ponter and hugged him close, and Jasmel hugged her father, too. The three of them laughed and cried, and, finally, disengaging himself, Adikor said, “Welcome back! Welcome back!”
[416] “Thank you,” said Ponter, smiling broadly.
Dern had politely moved a short distance away. Adikor caught sight of him. “Forgive us,” he said. “Ponter Boddit, this is Dern Kord, an engineer who has been helping us.”
“Healthy day,” said Ponter to Dern. Ponter began walking toward him, and—
“No!” shouted Dern.
But it was too late. Ponter had walked into the taut cable, and it had snapped in two, and the part that projected into the Gliksin world reeled out through the gateway, and the gateway disappeared with an electric blue flash.
The two worlds were separate once more.
Chapter Forty-six
Dern, clearly feeling like a travel cube without a passenger, politely left, heading back up to the surface, letting the family reunion occur in private. Ponter, Adikor, and Jasmel had moved to the small eating room in the quantum-computing lab.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” said Ponter, beaming at Adikor, then at Jasmel. “Either of you.”
“We thought the same thing,” said Adikor.
“You’re fine?” asked Ponter. “Everyone is fine?”
“Yes, I’m all right,” said Adikor.
“And Megameg? How is darling little Megameg?”
“She’s fine,” said Jasmel. “She really hasn’t understood everything that’s been going on.”
“I can’t wait to see her,” said Ponter. “I don’t care if it is seventeen days until Two next become One, I’m going to go into the Center tomorrow and give her a great big hug.”
Jasmel smiled. “She’d like that, Daddy.”
“What about Pabo?”
Adikor grinned. “She missed you awfully. She keeps looking up at every sound, hoping it might be you returning.”
[418] “That sweet bag of bones,” said Ponter.
“Say, Daddy,” said Jasmel, “what was it that female gave you?”
“Oh,” said Ponter. “I haven’t even looked myself. Let’s see ...”
Ponter reached into the pocket of his strange, alien pant, and pulled out a wad of white tissue. He carefully opened it up. Inside was a gold chain, and attached to it were two simple, perpendicular bars of unequal length, intersecting each other about one-third of the way down the longer of the two pieces.
“It’s beautiful!” said Jasmel. “What is it?”
Ponter’s eyebrow went up. “It’s the symbol of a belief system some of them subscribe to.”
“Who was that female?” asked Adikor.
“My friend,” said Ponter softly. “Her name—well, I can only say the first syllable of her name: ‘Mare.’ ”
Adikor laughed; “mare” was, of course, the word in their language for “beloved.”
“I know I told you to find yourself a new woman,” he said, his tone joking, “but I didn’t think you’d have to go that far to meet one who would put up with you.”
Ponter smiled, but it was a forced smile. “She was very kind,” he said.
Adikor knew his partner well enough to understand that whatever story there was to tell would come out in its own good time. Still ...
“Speaking of women,” said Adikor. “I, ah, have had some dealings with Klast’s woman-mate while you’ve been away.”
“Daklar!” said Ponter. “How is she?”
[419] “Actually,” said Adikor, looking now at Jasmel, “she’s become rather famous in your absence.”
“Really?” said Ponter. “Whatever for?”
“For making and pursuing a murder accusation.”
“Murder!” exclaimed Ponter. “Who was killed?”
“You were,” said Adikor, deadpan.
Ponter’s jaw dropped.
“You went missing, you see,” said Adikor, “and Bolbay thought ...”
“She thought you had murdered me?” declared Ponter incredulously.
“Well,” said Adikor, “you had disappeared, and the mine here is so deep within the rocks that the alibi-archive pavilion couldn’t pick up the signals from our Companions. Bolbay made it sound like the perfect crime.”
“Incredible,” said Ponter, shaking his head. “Who spoke on your behalf?”
“I did,” said Jasmel.
“Good girl!” said Ponter, sweeping her up in another hug. He spoke over his daughter’s shoulder. “Adikor, I’m sorry you had to go through this.”
“Me too, but—” He shrugged. “You’ll doubtless hear it soon enough. Bolbay said I resented you; she said that I felt like merely an adjunct to your work.”
“Nonsense,” said Ponter, releasing Jasmel. “I could have accomplished nothing without you.”
Adikor tipped his head. “That’s generous of you to say, but ...” He paused, then spread his arms, palms up. “But there was truth in her words.”
Ponter put an arm around Adikor’s shoulders. “Perhaps the theories were indeed more mine than yours—but [420] it was you who designed and built the quantum computer, and it is that computer that has opened up a new world to us. Your contribution exceeds mine a hundredfold because of that.”
Adikor smiled. “Thank you.”
“So what happened?” said Ponter. He grinned. “Your voice doesn’t sound any higher, so I assume she didn’t succeed.”
“Actually,” said Jasmel, “the case will be heard by a tribunal, starting tomorrow.”
Ponter shook his head in wonder. “Well, obviously, we must have the accusation expunged.”
Adikor smiled. “If you’d be so kind,” he said.
The next morning, Adjudicator Sard was joined by a wizened male and an even more wizened female, one sitting on each side of her. The Gray Council chamber was packed with spectators and ten or so silver-clad Exhibitionists. Daklar Bolbay was still wearing orange, the color of accusation. But there was considerable whispering among the crowd when Adikor entered, for instead of the accused’s blue, he had on a rather jaunty shirt with a floral print, and a light green pant. He made his way to the stool he’d gotten to know so well.
“Scholar Huld,” said Adjudicator Sard, “we have traditions, and I expect you to observe them. I think by now you’ve learned how little patience I have for wasting time, so I won’t send you home to change today, but tomorrow, I’ll expect you to be wearing blue.”
“Of course, Adjudicator,” said Adikor. “Forgive me.”
[421] Sard nodded. “The final investigation of Adikor Huld of Saldak Rim for the murder of Ponter Boddit of the same locale now begins. Presiding tribunal consists of Farba Dond”—the elderly man nodded—“as well as Kab Jodler, and myself, Komel Sard. The accuser is Daklar Bolbay, on behalf
of her late woman-mate’s minor child, Megameg Bek.” Sard looked around the packed room, and a self-satisfied frown creased Sard’s face; she clearly knew this was a case that would be talked about for countless months to come. “We will begin with the initial statement of the accuser. Daklar Bolbay, you may begin.”
“With respect, Adjudicator,” said Adikor, rising, “I was wondering if the person speaking for me might present my defense first?”
“Scholar Huld,” said Dond, sharply, “Adjudicator Sard has already warned you about ignoring traditions. The accuser always goes first, and—”
“Oh, I understand that,” said Adikor. “But, well, I do know of Adjudicator Sard’s desire to speed things along, and I thought this might help.”
Bolbay rose, perhaps sensing an opportunity. After all, if she went after the defense, she’d be able to pull it apart during her initial statement. “As accuser, I have no problem with the defense being presented first.”
“Thank you,” said Adikor, bowing magnanimously. “Now, if it—”
“Scholar Huld!” snapped Sard. “It is not up to the accuser to determine protocol. We will proceed as tradition dictates, with Daklar Bolbay speaking first, and—”
“I only thought—” said Adikor.
“Silence!” Sard was getting quite red in the face. “You [422] shouldn’t be talking at all.” She faced Jasmel. “Jasmel Ket, only you should speak on Scholar Huld’s behalf; please make sure he understands this.”
Jasmel rose. “With great respect, Worthy Adjudicator, I am not speaking for Adikor this time. You did, after all, suggest that he find a more appropriate defender.”
Sard nodded curtly. “I’m glad to see he can listen at least some of the time.” She scanned the crowd. “All right. Who is speaking on Adikor Huld’s behalf?”
Ponter Boddit, who had been standing just outside the Council-chamber doors, walked in. “I am,” he said.
Some spectators gasped.
“Very well,” said Sard, looking down, preparing to make a note. “And your name is?”
“Boddit,” said Ponter. Sard’s head snapped up. “Ponter Boddit.”
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