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Neanderthal Parallax 2 - Humans

Page 33

by Robert J. Sawyer


  “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

 

 

 


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