So much had happened in such a short time! Just yesterday, he had awoken in his own bed with Adikor, had fed his dog, had gone to work …
And now he was here, wherever here might be. Hak was right; this must be Earth. Ponter rather suspected there were other habitable planets in the infinite reaches of space, but he seemed to weigh the same here as he had at home, and the air was breathable—breathable, in the way that his beloved Adikor’s cooking might be said to be edible! There were foul aromas, gaseous smells, fruity smells, chemical smells, smells he couldn’t even begin to identify. But, he had to admit, the air did sustain him, and the food they had given him was (mostly!) chemically compatible with his digestive system.
So: Earth. And surely not Earth of the past. There were parts of modern Earth, especially in equatorial regions, that were little explored, but, as Hak had pointed out, the vegetation here was largely the same as that in Saldak, meaning it was unlikely that he was on another continent, or in the southern hemisphere. And although it was warm, many of the trees he’d seen were deciduous; this couldn’t be an equatorial area.
The future, then? But no. If humanity faded from existence, for some unfathomable reason, it wouldn’t be Gliksins that rose to take its place. Gliksins were extinct; a revival of them would be as unlikely as one of dinosaurs.
If this was not just Earth, but in fact the same part of Earth Ponter himself had come from, then where were the vast clouds of passenger pigeons? He’d seen not a single one since arriving here. Maybe, thought Ponter, the nauseating smells drove them away.
But no.
No.
This was neither the future, nor the past. It was the present—a parallel world, a world where, incredibly, despite their innate stupidity, the Gliksins had not gone extinct.
* * *
“Ponter,” said Reuben.
Ponter looked up, a vaguely lost expression on his face, as if a reverie had been broken. “Yes?” he said.
“Ponter, we will take you somewhere else. I’m not sure where. But, well, for starters, we’ll get you out of here. You, um, you can come stay with me.”
Ponter tipped his head, listening to Hak’s translation, no doubt. He looked puzzled at a few points; presumably Hak wasn’t quite sure how to render some of the words Reuben had used.
“Yes,” said Ponter, at last. “Yes. We go from here.”
Reuben gestured for Ponter to take the lead.
“Open door,” said Ponter, speaking on his own behalf, with evident delight, as he pulled open the hospital room’s door. “Go through door,” he said, following the words with the appropriate deed. He then waited for Louise and Reuben to exit as well. “Close door,” he said, shutting the door behind them. And then he smiled broadly, and when Ponter smiled broadly, it measured almost a foot from edge to edge. “Ponter out!”
Chapter 19
Following Dr. Singh’s instructions, Reuben Montego, Louise Benoit, and Ponter made it safely down to Reuben’s car, which he’d moved to the staff garage. Reuben had a wine-colored SUV, the paint chipped from the gravel roads at the Inco site. Ponter got into the backseat and lay down, covering his head with an opened section of today’s Sudbury Star. Louise—who had walked to the hospital—sat up front with Reuben. She’d accepted Reuben’s invitation to join him and Ponter at his place for dinner; he’d said he’d give her a lift back home later in the evening.
They drove along, CJMX-FM playing softly on the car’s stereo; the current song was Geri Halliwell’s rendition of “It’s Raining Men.” “So,” said Reuben, looking over at Louise, “make me a believer. Why do you think Ponter came from a parallel universe?”
Louise pursed her full lips for a moment—God, thought Reuben, she really is lovely—then: “How much physics do you know?”
“Me?” said Reuben. “Stuff from high school. Oh, and I bought a copy of A Brief History of Time when Stephen Hawking came to Sudbury, but I didn’t get very far into it.”
“All right,” said Louise, as Reuben made a right-hand turn, “let me ask you a question. If you shoot a single photon at a barrier with two vertical slits in it, and a piece of photographic paper on the other side shows interference patterns, what happened?”
“I don’t know,” said Reuben, truthfully.
“Well,” Louise said, “one interpretation is that the single photon turned into a wave of energy, and, as it hit the wall with the slits, each slit created a new wave front, and you got classical interference, with crests and troughs either amplifying each other or canceling each other out.”
Her words rang a vague bell in Reuben’s mind. “All right.”
“Well, as I said, that’s one interpretation. Another is that the universe actually splits, briefly becoming two universes. In one, the photon—still a particle—went through the left slit, and in the other, the photon went through the right slit. And, because it doesn’t make any conceivable difference which slit the photon went through in this or the other universe, the two universes collapse back into one, with the interference pattern being the result of the universes rejoining.”
Reuben nodded, but only because that seemed the right thing to do.
“So,” said Louise, “we have an experimental physical basis for possibly believing in the temporary existence of parallel universes—those interference patterns really do show up, even if you only send one photon toward a pair of slits. But what if the two universes didn’t collapse back into one? What if, after splitting, they continued to go their separate ways?”
“Yes?” said Reuben, trying to follow.
“Well,” said Louise, “imagine the universe splitting into two, who knows, tens of thousands of years ago, back when there were two species of humanity living side by side: our ancestors, which were the Cro-Magnons” (Reuben noted she pronounced it just as a French-speaker should, with no g sound), “and Ponter’s ancestors, ancient Neanderthals. I don’t know how long the two kinds coexisted, but—
“From 100,000 years ago until maybe 27,000 years ago,” said Reuben.
Louise made an impressed face, clearly surprised that Reuben had this tidbit at hand.
Reuben shrugged. “We’ve got a geneticist up from Toronto named Mary Vaughan. She told me.”
“Ah. Okay, well, at some point during that time, perhaps a split occurred, and the two universes continued to diverge. In one, our ancestors became dominant. And in the other, Neanderthals went on to become dominant, creating their own civilization and language.”
Reuben felt his head swimming. “But … but then how did the two universes come back into contact?”
“Je ne sais pas,” said Louise, shaking her head.
They exited Sudbury, heading down a country road to the misnamed town of Lively, near where the mine was actually located.
“Ponter,” said Reuben. “You can probably get up now; we won’t be stuck in traffic anymore.”
Ponter didn’t move.
Reuben realized he’d been too complex. “Ponter, up,” he said.
He heard the sound of newspaper rustling and saw Ponter’s massive head emerge in the rearview mirror. “Up,” confirmed Ponter.
“Tonight,” said Reuben, “you will stay at my house, understand?”
After a pause, presumably in which a translation was rendered, Ponter said, “Yes.”
Hak spoke up. “Ponter must have food.”
“Yes,” said Reuben. “Yes, we eat soon.”
They continued to Reuben’s home, arriving there about twenty minutes later. It was a modern two-story house on a couple of acres of land just outside Lively. Ponter, Louise, and Reuben headed indoors, with Ponter watching in fascination as Reuben unlocked the front door then bolted and chained it shut from the inside once they were within.
Ponter smiled. “Cool,” he said, with delight.
At first, Reuben thought he was complimenting him on his decor, but then he realized Ponter meant it literally. He was evidently quite pleased to find Reuben’s house to be air conditione
d.
“Well,” said Reuben, smiling at Louise and Ponter, “welcome to my humble abode. Make yourselves comfortable.”
Louise looked around. “You’re not married?” she asked.
Reuben wondered at the question; the first, best interpretation was that she was checking on his availability. The second, more likely, interpretation was she had suddenly realized that she had gone out into the country with a man she hardly knew, and was now alone with him and a Neanderthal in an empty house. And the third interpretation, Reuben realized, as he took stock of his own messy living room, with magazines scattered here and there and a plate with the remnants of a pizza crust sitting on the coffee table, was that obviously Reuben lived alone; no woman would have put up with such a mess.
“No,” said Reuben. “I was, but …”
Louise nodded. “You’ve got good taste,” she said, looking at the furnishings, a mixture of Caribbean and Canadian, with lots of dark stained wood.
“My wife did,” said Reuben. “I haven’t changed it much since we split.”
“Ah,” said Louise. “Can I help you with dinner?”
“No, I thought I’d just put on some steaks. I’ve got a barbecue out back.”
“I’m a vegetarian,” said Louise.
“Oh. Um, I could grill you some vegetables—and, um, a potato?”
“That would be great,” said Louise.
“Okay,” said Reuben. “You keep Ponter company.” He headed off to the bathroom to wash his hands.
Working on the deck behind the house, Reuben could see Louise and Ponter having an increasingly animated conversation. Presumably, Hak was picking up more words as they went along. Finally, when the steaks were done, Reuben tapped on the glass to get Louise’s and Ponter’s attention, and waved for them to come on out.
A moment later, they did so. “Dr. Montego,” said Louise, excitedly, “Ponter is a physicist!”
“He is?” said Reuben.
“Yes. Yes, indeed. I haven’t got all the details yet, but he’s definitely a physicist—and, I think, actually a quantum physicist.”
“How did you determine that?” asked Reuben.
“He said he thinks about the way things work, and I said—guessing he might be an engineer—did he mean big things, and he said, no, no, little things, things too small to be seen. And I drew some diagrams—basic physics stuff—and he recognized them, and said that’s what he did.”
Reuben looked at Ponter with renewed admiration. The low forehead and the prominent browridge made him look, well, a little dim, but—a physicist! A scientist! “Well, well, well,” said Reuben. He motioned for them to sit at a circular deck table with an umbrella, and he transferred steaks and grilled veggies he’d wrapped in aluminum foil to plates and set them on the table.
Ponter smiled his wide smile. This, clearly, was real food to him! But then he looked around again, just as Reuben had seen him do this morning, as if something were missing.
Reuben used his knife to slice a piece off his steak, and brought it to his mouth.
Ponter, awkwardly, mimicked what Reuben had done, although he sliced off a much bigger piece.
After Ponter had finished chewing, he made some sounds that must have been words in his language. They were immediately followed by a male voice Reuben hadn’t heard before. “Good,” it said. “Good food.” The voice seemed to have come from Ponter’s implant.
Reuben raised his eyebrows in surprise, and Louise explained. “I was getting confused talking to them, trying to keep straight what was the implant speaking on its own, and what was the implant translating for Ponter. It’s now using a male voice for Ponter’s translated words, and a female voice for its own words.”
“Simpler this way,” said Hak’s familiar female voice.
“Yes,” said Reuben, “it certainly is.”
Louise gingerly used her long fingers to unwrap the foil around her grilled veggies. “Well,” she said, “let’s see what else we can find out.”
And for the next hour Reuben and Louise talked with Ponter and Hak. But by then, the mosquitoes were out in abundance. Reuben lit a citronella candle to drive them away, but the smell made Ponter gag. Reuben extinguished the candle, and they went back into his living room, Ponter sitting in a big easy chair, Louise at one end of the couch with her long legs tucked underneath her body, and Reuben at the other end.
They continued talking for another three hours, slowly piecing together what had happened. And, once the full story had emerged, Reuben sank back into the couch, absolutely amazed.
Chapter 20
Day Three
Sunday, August 4
148/118/26
NEWS SEARCH
Keyword(s): Neanderthal
Word this morning from Sudbury, Canada, is that marriage proposals are outnumbering death threats two-to-one for the Neanderthal visitor. Twenty-eight women have sent letters or e-mails c/o this newspaper proposing to him, while Sudbury police and the RCMP have recorded only thirteen threats against his life …
USA TODAY POLL:
• Percentage who believe the so-called Neanderthal is a fake: 54.
• Who believe he’s really a Neanderthal, but came from somewhere on this Earth: 26.
• Who believe he came from outer space: 11.
• Who believe he came from a parallel world: 9.
Police today defused a bomb left at the entrance to the mineshaft elevator leading down to the cavern containing the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, where the so-called Neanderthal first appeared…
A religious sect in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is hailing the arrival of the Neanderthal in Canada as the Second Coming of Christ. “Of course he looks like an ancient human,” said the Rev. Hooley Gordwell. “The world is 6,000 years old, and Christ first came among us fully a third of that span ago. We’ve changed a bit, perhaps due to better nutrition, but he hasn’t.” The group is planning a pilgrimage to the mining town of Sudbury, Ontario, where the Neanderthal is currently living.
Early the next morning, after taking care not to be seen en route, Ponter and Dr. Montego rendezvoused with Mary in the lab at Laurentian. It was time to analyze Ponter’s DNA, to answer the big question.
Sequencing 379 nucleotides took meticulous work. Mary sat hunched over a milky white plastic desktop, the surface illuminated by fluorescent tubes beneath it. She’d placed the autorad film on the desktop and, with a felt-tip marker, wrote out the letters of the genetic alphabet for the string in question: G-G-C—one of the triplets that coded for the amino acid glycine; T-A-T, the code for tyrosine; A-T-A, which in mitochondrial DNA, as opposed to nuclear DNA, specified methionine; A-A-A, the recipe for lysine …
At last she was done: all 379 bases from a specific part of Ponter’s control region were identified. Mary’s notebook computer had a little DNA-analysis program on it. She started by typing in the 379 letters she’d just written on the film, and then she asked Reuben to type them in again, just to make sure they’d been entered correctly.
The computer immediately reported three differences between what Mary had entered and what Reuben had, noting—it was an intelligent little program—a frameshift caused by Mary accidentally leaving off a T at one point; the other two errors were typos by Reuben. When she was sure they had all 379 letters entered correctly, she had the program compare Ponter’s sequence to the one she’d extracted from the Neanderthal type specimen at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum.
“Well?” said Reuben. “What’s the verdict?”
Mary leaned back in her chair, astonished. “The DNA I took from Ponter,” she said, “differs in seven places from the DNA recovered from the Neanderthal fossil.” She raised a hand. “Now, some individual variation was to be expected, and naturally there’d be some genetic drift over time, but …”
“Yes?” said Reuben.
Mary lifted her shoulders. “He’s a Neanderthal, all right.”
“Wow,” said Reuben, looking at Ponter as if seeing him for the first ti
me. “Wow. A living Neanderthal.”
Ponter spoke a bit in his own language, and his implant interpreted: “My kind gone?” said the male voice.
“From here?” asked Mary. “Yes, your kind is gone from here—for at least 27,000 years.”
Ponter lowered his head, contemplating this.
Mary contemplated it, too. Until Ponter had shown up, the nearest living relatives Homo sapiens had were the two members of genus Pan: the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Both were equally closely related to humans, sharing about 98.5 percent of humanity’s DNA. Mary was nowhere near finished with her studies on Ponter’s DNA, but she guessed he shared as much as 99.5 percent with her kind of H. sapiens.
And that 0.5 percent accounted for all the differences. If he was a typical Neanderthal, his braincase probably was larger than a normal man’s. And he was better muscled than just about any human Mary had ever met: his arms were as thick around as most men’s thighs. Plus, his eyes were an incredible golden brown; she wondered if there was any eye-color variation among his kind.
He was also quite hairy, although it seemed less so because of its light color. His forearms, and, she presumed, his back and chest, were well thatched. And he had a beard, and a full head of hair, parted in the center.
It hit her then: where she’d seen that sort of part before. Bonobos, those lithe apes sometimes called pygmy chimpanzees, all sported the same’do. Fascinating. She wondered whether all his people had hair like that or if it was just a style he cultivated.
Ponter spoke again in his own language, his voice low, perhaps really just talking to himself, but the implant rendered the words in English anyway: “My kind gone.”
Mary made her tone as gentle as she could. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
More syllables spilled from Ponter’s lips, and his Companion said, “I … no others. I … all …” He shook his head, and spoke again. The Companion switched to its female voice, speaking for itself. “I do not have the vocabulary to translate what Ponter is saying.”
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