Hominids

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Only?” said Ponter, startled. “You mean exclusively? No, no, no. Adikor and I kept each other company when Two were separate, but when Two became One, we of course had—what did you call it, Lou?—‘affectionate touching of the genitals’ with our respective females…or, at least I did until Klast, my woman-mate, died.”

  “Ah,” said Mary. “You’re bisexual.” Bleep. “You have genital contact with men and women.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is everyone like that in your world?” asked Louise, stabbing some lettuce with her fork. “Bisexual?”

  “Just about.” Ponter blinked, getting it at last. “You mean it is different here?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Reuben. “Well, for most people, anyway. I mean, sure, there are some bisexual people, and lots and lots of gay—homosexual—people. But the vast majority are heterosexual. That means they have affectionate contact only with members of the opposite gender.”

  “How boring,” said Ponter.

  Louise actually giggled. Then, composing herself, she said, “So, do you have any children?”

  “Two daughters,” said Ponter, nodding. “Jasmel and Megameg.”

  “Lovely names,” said Louise.

  Ponter looked sad, obviously thinking of the fact that he’d likely never see them again.

  Reuben clearly saw this, too, and sought to move the conversation to something less personal. “So, um, so what’s this ‘Two become One’ you mentioned? What’s that all about?”

  “Well, on my world, males and females live mostly apart, so—”

  “Binford!” exclaimed Mary.

  “No, it is true,” said Ponter.

  “That wasn’t a swear word,” said Mary. “It’s a man’s name. Lewis Binford is an anthropologist who argues the same thing: that Neanderthal men and women lived largely separate lives on this Earth. He bases it on sites at Combe Grenal, in France.”

  “He is correct,” said Ponter. “Women live in the Centers of our territories; males at the Rims. But once a month, we males come into the Center and spend four days with the females; we say that ‘Two become One’ during this time.”

  “Par-tay!” said Louise, grinning.

  “Fascinating,” said Mary.

  “It is necessary. We do not produce food the way you do, so the population size must be kept in check.”

  Reuben frowned. “So this ‘Two becoming One’ business is for birth control?”

  Ponter nodded. “In part. The High Gray Council—the governing body of elders—sets the dates on which we come together, and Two normally become One when the women are incapable of conceiving. But if it is time to produce a new generation, then the dates are changed, and we come together when the women are most fertile.”

  “Goodness,” said Mary. “A whole planet on the rhythm method. The Pope would like you guys. But—but how can that work? I mean, surely your women don’t all have their periods—undergo menstruation—at once?”

  Ponter blinked. “Of course they do.”

  “But how could—oh, wait. I see.” Mary smiled. “That nose of yours: it’s very sensitive, isn’t it?”

  “I do not think of it as being so.”

  “But it is—compared to ours I mean. Compared to the noses we have.”

  “Well, your noses are very small,” said Ponter. “They are, ah, rather disconcerting to look at. I keep thinking you will suffocate—although I have noticed many of you breathe through your mouths, presumably to avoid that.”

  “We’ve always assumed that Neanderthals evolved in response to Ice Age conditions,” said Mary. “And our best guess was that your large noses allowed you to humidify frigid air before drawing it into your lungs.”

  “Our—the scientists who study ancient humans—believe the same thing,” said Ponter.

  “The climate has warmed up a great deal, though, since your big noses evolved,” said Mary. “But you’ve retained that feature perhaps because it has the beneficial side effect of giving you a much better sense of smell than you would have had otherwise.”

  “Does it?” said Ponter. “I mean, I can smell all of you, and all the different foods in the kitchen, and the flowers out back, and whatever acrid thing Reuben and Lou have been burning downstairs, but—”

  “Ponter,” said Reuben, quickly, “we can’t smell you at all.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Oh, if I stuck my nose right into your armpit, I might smell something. But normally we humans can’t smell each other.”

  “How do you find one another in the dark?”

  “By voice,” said Mary.

  “Very strange,” said Ponter.

  “But you can do more than just detect a person’s presence, can’t you?” said Mary. “That time you looked at me. You could…” She swallowed but, well, Louise was another woman, and Reuben was a doctor. “You could tell I was having my period, couldn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Mary nodded. “Even women of Louise and my kind, if they live together long enough in the same house, can get their menstrual cycles synchronized—and we have lousy senses of smell. I guess it makes sense that whole cities of your women would be on the same cycle.”

  “It never occurred to me that it might be another way,” said Ponter. “I thought it odd that you were menstruating but Lou was not.”

  Louise frowned but said nothing.

  “Look,” said Reuben, “does anybody want anything else? Ponter, another Coke?”

  “Yes,” said Ponter. “Thank you.”

  Reuben got up.

  “You know that stuff’s got caffeine in it?” said Mary. “It’s addictive.”

  “Do not worry,” said Ponter. “I am only drinking seven or eight cans a day.”

  Louise laughed and went back to eating her salad.

  Mary took another bite of her hamburger, circles of onion crunching beneath her teeth. “Wait a minute,” she said, once she’d swallowed. “That means your females don’t have hidden ovulation.”

  “Well, it is hidden from view,” Ponter said.

  “Yes, but…well, you know, I used to team-teach a course with the Women’s Studies department: The Biology of Sexual Power Relationships. We’d assumed that hidden ovulation was the key to females gaining constant protection and provisioning by males. You know: if you can’t tell when your female is fertile, you better be attentive all the time, lest you be cuckolded.”

  Hak bleeped.

  “Cuckolded,” repeated Mary. “That’s when a man is investing his energies providing for children that aren’t biologically his. But with hidden ovulation—”

  Ponter’s laugh split the air; his massive chest and deep mouth gave him a deep, thunderous guffaw.

  Mary and Louise looked at him, astonished. “What’s so funny?” said Reuben, depositing another Coke in front of Ponter.

  Ponter held up a hand; he was trying to stop laughing, but wasn’t succeeding yet. Tears had appeared at the corners of his sunken eyes, and his normally pale skin was looking quite red.

  Mary, still seated at the table, put her hands on her hips—but immediately became self-conscious of her body language; hands on hips increased one’s apparent size, in order to intimidate. But Ponter was so much stouter and better muscled than any woman—or just about any man—that it was a ridiculous thing to be doing. Still, she demanded, “Well?”

  “I am sorry,” said Ponter, regaining his control. He used his long thumb to wipe the tears from his eyes. “It is just that sometimes your people do have ridiculous ideas.” He smiled. “When you talk about hidden ovulation, you mean that human females do not have genital swelling when they are in heat, right?”

  Mary nodded. “Chimps and bonobos do; so do gorillas and most other primates.”

  “But humans did not stop having such swelling in order to hide ovulation,” said Ponter. “Genital swelling disappeared when it was no longer an effective signal. It disappeared when the climate got colder and humans started wearing clothing. That sort of
visual display, based on engorging tissues with fluid, is energetically expensive; there was no value in maintaining it once we were covering our bodies with animal hides. But, at least for my people, ovulation was still obvious due to smell.”

  “You can smell ovulation, as well as menstruation?” asked Reuben.

  “The…chemicals…associated with them, yes.”

  “Pheromones,” supplied Reuben.

  Mary nodded slowly. “And so,” she said, as much to Ponter as to herself, “males could go off for weeks at a time without worrying about their females being impregnated by somebody else.”

  “That is right,” said Ponter. “But there is more to it than that.”

  “Yes?” said Mary.

  “We say now that the reason our male ancestors—I think you have the same metaphor—‘headed for the hills’ was because of the, ah, unpleasantness of females during Last Five.”

  “Last Five?” said Louise.

  “The last five days of the month; the time leading up to the beginning of their periods.”

  “Oh,” said Reuben. “PMS. Premenstrual syndrome.”

  “Yes,” said Ponter. “But, of course, that is not the real reason.” He shrugged a little. “My daughter Jasmel is studying pre-generation-one history; she explained it to me. What really happened was that men used to fight constantly over access to women. But, as Mare has noted, the only time access to women is evolutionarily important is during the part of each month when they might become pregnant. Since all women’s cycles were synchronized, men got along much better for most of the month if they retreated from females, only to return as a group when it was reproductively important that they do so. It was not female unpleasantness that led to the split; it was male violence.”

  Mary nodded. It had been years since she’d co-taught that course on Sexual Power Relationships, but it seemed downright typical: men causing the problem and blaming women for it. Mary doubted she’d ever meet a female from Ponter’s world, but, at that moment, she felt real affinity with her Neanderthal sisters.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “Healthy day, Daklar,” said Jasmel, coming through the door to the house. Although Jasmel Ket and Daklar Bolbay still shared a home, they had not spoken much since the dooslarm basadlarm.

  “Healthy day,” repeated Bolbay, without warmth. “If you—” Her nostrils dilated. “You’re not alone.”

  Adikor came through the door as well. “Healthy day,” he said.

  Bolbay looked at Jasmel. “More treachery, child?”

  “It’s not treachery,” Jasmel said. “It’s concern—for you, and for my father.”

  “What do you want of me?” said Bolbay, looking through narrowed eyes at Adikor.

  “The truth,” he said. “Just the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “About you. About why you are pursuing me.”

  “I’m not the one under investigation,” said Bolbay.

  “No,” agreed Adikor. “Not yet. But that may change.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I am prepared to have you served with documents of my own,” said Adikor.

  “On what basis?”

  “On the basis that you are unlawfully interfering with my life.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it?” Adikor shrugged. “We’ll let an adjudicator decide that.”

  “It’s a transparent attempt to stall the process that will lead to your sterilization,” said Bolbay. “Anyone can see that.”

  “If it is—if it is that transparent, that flimsy—then an adjudicator will dismiss the matter…but not before I have had a chance to question you.”

  “Question me? About what?”

  “About your motive. About why you are doing this to me.”

  Bolbay looked at Jasmel. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?”

  “It was also,” said Jasmel, “my idea that we come here first, before Adikor proceeded with the accusation. This is a family matter: you, Daklar, were my mother’s woman-mate, and Adikor here is my father’s man-mate. You have been through a lot, Daklar—we all have—with the loss of my mother.”

  “This has nothing to do with Klast!” snapped Bolbay. “Nothing.” She looked at Adikor. “It’s about him.”

  “Why?” said Adikor. “Why is it about me?”

  Bolbay shook her head again. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

  “Yes, we do,” said Adikor. “And you will answer my questions here, or you will answer them in front of an adjudicator. But you will answer them.”

  “You’re bluffing,” said Bolbay.

  Adikor raised his left arm, with his wrist facing toward her. “Is your name Daklar Bolbay, and do you reside here in Saldak Center?”

  “I won’t accept documents from you.”

  “You’re just delaying the inevitable,” said Adikor. “I will get a judicial server—who can upload to your implant whether you pull out the control bud or not.” A pause. “I say again, Are you Daklar Bolbay, and do you reside here in Saldak Center?”

  “You would really do this?” said Bolbay. “You would really drag me before an adjudicator?”

  “As you have dragged me,” said Adikor.

  “Please,” said Jasmel. “Just tell him. It’s better this way—better for you.”

  Adikor crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Well?”

  “I’ve nothing to say,” Bolbay replied.

  Jasmel let out a great, long sigh. “Ask her,” she said softly when it was done, “about her man-mate.”

  “You don’t know anything about that,” snapped Bolbay.

  “Don’t I?” said Jasmel. “How did you learn that Adikor was the one who had hit my father?”

  Bolbay said nothing.

  “Obviously, Klast told you,” said Jasmel.

  “Klast was my woman-mate,” said Bolbay, defiantly. “She didn’t keep secrets from me.”

  “And she was my mother,” said Jasmel. “Neither did she keep them from me.”

  “But…she…I…” Bolbay trailed off.

  “Tell me about your man-mate,” said Adikor. “I—I don’t think I’ve ever met him, have I?”

  Bolbay shook her head slowly. “No. He’s been gone for a long time; we separated long ago.”

  “And that’s why you don’t have children of your own?” asked Adikor, gently.

  “You’re so smug,” replied Bolbay. “You think it’s that simple? I couldn’t keep a mate, and so I never reproduced? Is that what you think?”

  “I don’t think anything,” said Adikor.

  “I would have been a good mother,” said Bolbay, perhaps as much to herself as to Adikor. “Ask Jasmel. Ask Megameg. Since Klast died, I’ve looked after them wonderfully. Isn’t that so, Jasmel? Isn’t that so?”

  Jasmel nodded. “But you’re a 145, just like Ponter and Klast. Just like Adikor. You might still be able to have a child of your own. The dates for Two becoming One will be shifted again next year; you could…”

  Adikor’s eyebrow rolled up. “It would be your last chance, wouldn’t it? You’ll be 520 months old—forty years—next year, just like me. You might have a child then, as part of generation 149, but certainly not ten years later, when generation 150 will be born.”

  There was a sneer in Bolbay’s voice. “Did you need your fancy quantum computer to figure that out?”

  “And Ponter,” said Adikor, nodding slowly, “Ponter was without a woman-mate. You and he had loved the same woman, after all, and you were already tabant for his two children, so you thought…”

  “You and my father?” said Jasmel. She didn’t sound shocked by the notion, merely surprised.

  “And why not?” said Bolbay, defiantly. “I’d known him almost as long as you had, Adikor, and he and I had always gotten along.”

  “But now he’s gone, too,” said Adikor. “That was my first thought, you know: that you were simply inconsolable over the loss of him, and so were snapping
teeth at me. But you must see, Daklar, that you’re wrong to be doing that. I loved Ponter, and certainly wouldn’t have interfered with his choice of a new woman-mate, so—”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” said Bolbay, shaking her head. “Nothing.”

  “Then why do you hate me so?”

  “I don’t hate you because of what happened to Ponter,” she said.

  “But you do hate me.”

  Bolbay was silent. Jasmel was looking at the floor.

  “Why?” said Adikor. “I’ve never done anything to you.”

  “But you hit Ponter,” snapped Bolbay.

  “Ages ago. And he forgave me.”

  “And so you got to stay whole,” she said. “You got to have a child of your own. You got away with it.”

  “With what?”

  “With your crime! With trying to kill Ponter!”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

  “You were violent, a monster. You should have been sterilized. But my Pelbon…”

  “Who is Pelbon?” said Adikor.

  Bolbay fell silent again.

  “Her man-mate,” said Jasmel, softly.

  “What happened to Pelbon?” asked Adikor.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” said Bolbay, looking away. “You have no idea. You wake up one morning to find two enforcers waiting for you, and they take your man-mate away, and—”

  “And what?” said Adikor.

  “And they castrate him,” said Bolbay.

  “Why?” asked Adikor. “What did he do?”

  “He didn’t do anything,” said Bolbay. “He didn’t do a single thing.”

  “Then why…” started Adikor. But then it hit him. “Oh. One of his relatives…”

  Bolbay nodded but didn’t meet Adikor’s eyes. “His brother had assaulted someone, and so his brother was ordered sterilized along with—”

  “Along with everyone who shared fifty percent of his genetic material,” finished Adikor.

  “He didn’t do anything, my Pelbon,” said Bolbay. “He didn’t do anything to anyone, and he was punished, I was punished. But you! You almost killed a man, and you got away with it! They should have castrated you, not my poor Pelbon!”

  “Daklar,” said Adikor. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”