Neanderthal Parallax 2 - Humans
Page 33
“I know it will be difficult, but…”
“Yes?” said Mary.
Ponter closed the distance between himself and Mary, and he looked into her eyes. “But your people have traveled to the moon, and mine have opened a portal to another universe. Things that are difficult can be done.”
“There will be sacrifices,” said Mary. “For both of us.”
“Perhaps,” said Ponter. “Perhaps not. Perhaps we can extract the marrow but still keep the bone for toolmaking.”
Mary frowned for a moment, then got it. “‘Have our cake and eat it, too.’ That’s how my people would phrase it. But I guess you’re right: our people aren’t that dissimilar. Wanting it all, why, that’s just…” Mary trailed off, unable to find an appropriate word.
But Ponter knew it. Ponter knew exactly what it was. “That is just human,” he said, taking Mary in his arms.
About the Author
Robert J. Sawyer lives a double life: he’s a bestselling mainstream writer in his native Canada (his novels have appeared on the top-ten bestseller lists in Maclean’s: Canada’s Weekly News magazine and The Globe and Mail: Canada’s National Newspaper ) and a bestselling genre-fiction writer in the United States (his Hugo Award–nominated Calculating God hit number one on the bestseller list published by Locus: The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field).
He has won twenty-eight national and international awards for his fiction, including the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Award for Best Novel of the Year (for The Terminal Experiment); an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada; seven Aurora Awards (Canada’s top honor in science fiction); the Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award for Best Short Story of the Year; and the top SF awards in France (Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire), Japan (Seiun, which he’s won twice), and Spain ( Premio UPC de Ciencia Ficción, which he’s also won twice). He’s also one of only thirty people ever to receive the Alumni Award of Distinction from his alma mater, Toronto’s Ryerson University.
In addition to trophies for the above, his office contains a cast of the original Archaeopteryx fossil; a selection of hominid skull reconstructions; plastic and blown-glass models of Burgess Shale life forms; a moon globe; amethyst geodes; a giant Fireball XL5 model; a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary; a shelf of Folio Society hardcovers; a stereo often loaded with Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Righteous Brothers, or the Mamas and the Papas; and a La-Z-Boy recliner, from which, with cordless keyboard in his lap, he does most of his writing.
He and his wife, poet Carolyn Clink, live in Mississauga, Ontario, just west of Toronto. For more about Robert Sawyer and his fiction—including a readers’ group discussion guide for this novel, and a preview of Hybrids, the final volume in this trilogy—visit his World Wide Web site (which The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature calls “the most elaborate and interesting of any created by a Canadian writer”) at www.sfwriter.com.
Table of Contents
Humans
Contents
Acknowledgments
Humans
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
About the Author