“What are you talking about?”
Ponter kept his volume low. “I can kill you with my bare hands.”
“Are you crazy?” shouted Ruskin, backing away.
“No,” said Ponter, stepping forward. “I am not crazy. It is this world of yours that is crazy.”
Ruskin’s eyes were darting left and right in the messy room, clearly looking for an escape route…or a weapon. Behind him was an opening in the wall—a pass-through, isn’t that what Mare called the one in her apartment?—into what looked like it might be a food-preparation area.
“You will face me,” said Ponter. “You will face justice.”
“Look,” said Ruskin, “I know you’re new to this world, but we have laws. You can’t just—”
“You are a multiple rapist.”
“What are you on?”
“I can prove it,” Ponter said, still moving closer.
Suddenly Ruskin spun around and arched his body, reaching through the pass-through. He turned back around, holding a heavy frying pan—Ponter had seen such things before when he was quarantined at Reuben Montego’s house. Ruskin held the pan up in front of him, gripping its handle with both hands. “Don’t come any closer,” he said.
Ponter continued his advance undeterred. When he was only a pace from Ruskin, Ruskin swung. Ponter brought up his left arm to shield his face. Air resistance must have slowed the pan enough that the shield didn’t kick in, and so Hak took much of the impact. Ponter’s right hand shot forward and seized Ruskin’s larynx.
“Drop that object,” said Ponter, “or I will crush your throat.”
Ruskin tried to speak, but Ponter constricted his fingers. The Gliksin managed to get one more good blow with the pan to Ponter’s shoulder—fortunately, not the one with the bullet wound. Ponter lifted Ruskin off the ground by the neck. “Drop that object!” Ponter growled.
Ruskin’s face had turned purple, and his eyes—his blue eyes—were bugging out. He finally dropped the pan, which hit the hardwood floor with a loud clang. Ponter spun Ruskin around and slammed him against the wall adjacent to the pass through. The wall material caved in somewhat under the impact, and a large crack appeared. “Did you see the media coverage of Ambassador Prat killing our attacker?”
Ruskin was still gasping for air.
“Did you?” demanded Ponter.
Finally, Ruskin nodded.
“Ambassador Prat is a 144. I am a 145; I am ten years younger than her. Although my wisdom does not yet equal what she possesses, my strength exceeds hers. If you provoke me further, I will cave in your skull.”
“What—” Ruskin’s voice sounded incredibly raw. “What do you want?”
“First,” said Ponter, “I want the truth. I want you to admit your crimes.”
“I know that thing on your arm is a recorder, for Christ’s sake.”
“Admit the crimes.”
“I never—”
“The Toronto Enforcers have samples of your DNA from Qaiser Remtulla’s rape.”
Ruskin choked out the words. “If they knew it was my DNA, they’d be here, not you.”
“If you persist in denial, I will kill you.”
Ruskin managed to shake his head slightly, despite Ponter’s crushing grip. “A coerced confession is no confession at all.”
Hak bleeped, but Ponter guessed the meaning of coerced. “All right, then convince me that you are innocent.”
“I don’t have to convince you of squat.”
“You were passed over for advancement, and for job security, because of your skin tone and gender,” said Ponter.
Ruskin said nothing.
“You hated the fact that others—that females—were being advanced ahead of you.”
Ruskin was struggling, trying to get away from Ponter, but Ponter had no trouble holding him.
“You wished to hurt them,” Ponter said. “To humiliate them.”
“Keep fishing, caveman.”
“You were denied that which you wanted, and so you took that which should only be given.”
“It wasn’t like that…”
“Tell me,” hissed Ponter, bending one of Ruskin’s arms backward. “Tell me what it was like.”
“I deserved tenure,” said Ruskin. “But they kept screwing me over. Those bitches kept screwing me over, and—”
“And what?”
“And so I showed them what a man could do.”
“You are a disgrace to manhood,” said Ponter. “How many did you rape? How many?”
“Just…”
“More than Mare and Qaiser?”
Silence.
Ponter pulled Ruskin away from the wall, then slammed him into it again. The crack grew longer. “Were there any others?”
“No. Just…”
He bent Ruskin’s arm farther. “Just who? Just who?” The beast yowled with pain. “Just who?” repeated Ponter.
Ruskin grunted, and then, through clenched teeth: “Just Vaughan. And that Paki bitch…”
“What?” said Ponter, baffled, as Hak bleeped. He twisted the arm again.
“Remtulla. I raped Remtulla.”
Ponter relaxed his grip somewhat. “It stops now, do you understand? You will never do this again. I will be watching. Others will be watching. Never again.”
Ruskin grunted inarticulately.
“Never again,” said Ponter. “Make that pledge.”
“Ne-ver…again,” said Ruskin, his teeth still clenched.
“And you will never speak of my visit here, to anyone. To do so would bring your society’s punishment for your crimes. Do you understand? Do you?”
Ruskin managed a nod.
“All right,” said Ponter, briefly loosening his grip. But then he slammed Ruskin against the wall again, this time a piece of its material falling free. “No, no, it is not all right,” Ponter continued, his own teeth clenched. “It is not enough. It is not justice.” He threw his weight against Ruskin once more, his groin slamming against the Gliksin’s backside. “You will find out what it is like to be a woman.”
Ruskin’s whole body tensed. “No, man. Christ, no—not that—”
“It is only justice,” said Ponter, reaching down into his medical belt, and pulling out a compressed-gas injector.
The device hissed against the side of Ruskin’s neck. “What the hell is that?” he shouted. “You can’t just…”
Ponter felt Ruskin collapse. He lowered him to the floor.
“Hak,” said Ponter. “Are you all right?”
“That was quite an impact earlier,” said the Companion, “but, yes, I am undamaged.”
“Sorry about that.” Ponter looked down at Ruskin, lying on his back in a heap on the floor. He grabbed the man’s legs, stretching them out.
Ponter then reached for Ruskin’s waist. It took some time, but finally he figured out how the belt worked. Once the belt was unbuckled, Ponter found the snap and the zipper that closed the pant. He undid them both.
“You should remove his footwear first,” said Hak.
Ponter nodded. “Right. I keep forgetting they are separate.” He worked his way down to Ruskin’s feet, and, after some experimentation, got the laces undone and the shoes removed. Ponter winced at the odor that came up from the feet. He moved back, walking on his knees, up to Ruskin’s waist, where he pulled down the Gliksin’s pant, removing it from the body. He then pulled down the underwear, shimmying it down the almost-hairless legs, and finally getting it over the feet.
At last, Ponter looked at Ruskin’s genitalia. “Something is wrong…” said Ponter. “He is disfigured somehow.” He moved his arm, to give Hak’s lens an unobstructed view.
“Astonishing,” said the Companion. “He has no preputial hood.”
“What?” said Ponter.
“No foreskin.”
“Are all Gliksin males like that, I wonder?” said Ponter.
“It would make them unique among primates,” replied Hak.
“Well,” said Pon
ter, “it doesn’t affect what I’m going to do…”
Cornelius Ruskin came to sometime the next day; he could tell it was morning by the light streaming in through his apartment’s windows. His head was pounding, his throat was aching, his elbow was aflame, his backside hurt, and it felt as though he’d been kicked in the nuts. He tried to raise his head from the floor, but a wave of nausea overcame him, so he let his head back down onto the hardwood. He tried again a moment later, and this time did manage to raise himself up on one elbow. His shirt and pants were on, and so were his socks and shoes. But the shoelaces were untied.
God damn it, Ruskin thought. God damn it. He’d heard the Neanderthals were gay. Christ, though, he hadn’t been ready for that. He rolled onto his side and placed a hand over the seat of his pants, praying that they wouldn’t be bloody. Vomit crawled up his aching throat, and he fought it back down with a swallow that was excruciating.
“Justice,” Boddit had said. Justice would have been getting a decent job, instead of being passed over by a bunch of underqualified women and minorities…
Ruskin’s head was pounding so much he thought Ponter must still be there, smashing the frying pan into his skull over and over again. Ruskin closed his eyes, trying to gather his strength. There were so many aches, so much pain, he couldn’t focus on anything.
Goddamned ape-man’s idea of poetic justice! Just because he’d put it in Vaughan and Remtulla, showing them who was really boss, Boddit had apparently figured it would be fair play to sodomize him.
And it was doubtless a warning, too: a warning to keep his mouth shut, a warning of what was in store for him if he ever accused Ponter of anything, of what would happen to him in prison if he ever did get sent up for rape…
Ruskin took a massive breath and moved a hand to his throat. He could feel indentations in it, left by the ape-man’s fingers. Christ, it was probably bruised something awful.
Finally, Ruskin’s head stopped swirling enough for him to try to haul himself to his feet. He used the lip on the pass through to steady himself, and stood there, waiting for the flashes of light to die away in his eyes. Rather than bend over to tie the shoelaces, he kicked his shoes off.
He waited another full minute, until his head stopped pounding enough that he thought he wouldn’t keel over if he let go of his support. Then he limped his way down the short corridor to the apartment’s single, dingy bathroom, painted in a sickly green chosen by some previous tenant. He entered and closed the door behind him, revealing a full-length mirror, cracked at one corner where it had been screwed into the door. He undid his belt and lowered his pants, and then turned his back to the mirror, and, steeling himself for what he might see, lowered his underwear.
He’d been worried that the same sort of fingerprint indentations would be in his ass cheeks, but there was nothing, except a large bruise on one side—which, he realized, must have come from when Ponter first knocked him across the room when he broke through the chained door.
Ruskin grabbed one of the cheeks himself, pulling it aside so he could have a look at his sphincter. He had no idea what to expect—blood, maybe?—but there was nothing unusual.
He couldn’t imagine such an attack would leave no mark, but it seemed that had been the case. Indeed, as far as he could tell, nothing at all had been done to his rear end.
Perplexed, he shuffled over to the toilet, his pants and briefs down around his ankles. He faced the porcelain fixture and reached for his penis, got hold of it, took aim, and—
No!
No, no, no!
Jesus H. Christ, no!
Ruskin felt around, bent over, straightened back up, then staggered back to the mirror for a better look.
God, God, God…
He could see himself, see his blue eyes round in absolute horror, see his jaw hanging down, and—
He loomed into the mirror, trying to get a good view of his scrotum. There was a vertical line running along it that looked like—
Could it be?
—like it had been seared shut.
He felt around again, probing the loose, wrinkled sack, hoping that somehow he’d been mistaken the first time.
But he wasn’t.
For the love of God, he wasn’t.
Ruskin staggered back against the sink and let out a long, piercing howl.
His testicles were gone.
Chapter Forty
Jurard Selgan was quiet for several moments. Of course, what Ponter had told him was absolutely confidential. Discussions between a patient and his or her personality sculptor were time coded. Selgan would never dream of revealing what any patient had told him, and no one could unlock either his or his patients’ alibi archives for the time spent in therapy sessions. Still, what Ponter had done….
“We don’t take the law into our own hands,” Selgan said.
Ponter nodded. “As I said at the outset, I’m not proud of what I did.”
Selgan’s tone was soft. “You also said you would do it again, if given the chance.”
“What he was doing was wrong,” said Ponter. “Much more wrong than what I did to him.” He spread his arms, as if searching for a way to justify his behavior. “He had hurt women, and he was going to go on hurting women. But I put a stop to that. Not just because he now knew I could identify him by his smell, but for the same reason we’ve always sterilized violent males in that particular way. We aren’t just preventing their genes from being passed on, after all. By eliminating their testicles, we cause their testosterone levels to fall dramatically, making their aggression abate.”
“And you felt if you did not act, no one would?” said Selgan.
“Exactly! He would have gotten away with it! Mare Vaughan thought she had the upper hand originally, that the rapist didn’t know what he was dealing with, attacking a geneticist. But she was wrong. He knew precisely what he was dealing with. He knew how to make sure that he would never be convicted of his crimes.”
“Just as,” said Selgan, softly, “you knew that you would never be convicted of your crime in castrating him.”
Ponter said nothing.
“Does Mare know? Have you told her?”
Ponter shook his head.
“Why not?”
“Why not?” repeated Ponter, astonished by the question. “Why not? I’d committed a crime—a grievous assault. I did not want her to become involved in that; I did not want her to have any culpability.”
“Is that all?”
Ponter was silent, and examined the all-encircling wooden wall, with its polished grain.
“Was it?” prodded Selgan.
“Of course, I did not want her to think less of me,” said Ponter.
“She might have thought more of you,” said Selgan. “After all, you did this for her, to protect her, and others like her.”
But Ponter shook his head. “No. No, she would have been angry with me, disappointed in me.”
“Why?”
“She is a Christian,” he said. “The philosopher whose teachings she follows held that forgiveness was the greatest of all virtues.”
Selgan rolled his gray eyebrow up his browridge. “Some things are very difficult to forgive.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” snapped Ponter.
“I did not mean what you did; I mean what he—this Gliksin male—had done to Mare.”
Ponter took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.
“Is—is this Ruskin the only Gliksin you castrated?”
Ponter’s gaze jerked back onto Selgan. “Of course!”
“Ah,” said Selgan. “It’s just that…”
“What?”
Selgan ignored the question for the moment. “Have you told anyone else what you did?”
“No.”
“Not even Adikor?”
“Not even Adikor.”
“But surely you can trust him?” said Selgan.
“Yes, but…”
“Do you see?” said Selgan, after Ponter had trai
led off. “In our world, we don’t just sterilize the perpetrators of a violent crime, do we?”
“Well, no. We…”
“Yes?” said Selgan.
“We sterilize the criminal and everyone who shares at least fifty percent of his or her genetic material.”
“And that would be?”
“Siblings. Parents.”
“Yes. And?”
“And—well, and identical twins. That’s why we say at least fifty percent; identical twins have one hundred percent of their DNA in common.”
“Yes, yes, but you’re forgetting another group.”
“Brothers. Sisters. The criminal’s mother. The criminal’s father.”
“And…”
“I don’t know what you’re…” Ponter fell silent. “Oh,” he said, softly. He looked at Selgan again, then dropped his gaze. “Offspring. Children.”
“And you have children, don’t you?”
“My two daughters, Jasmel Ket and Mega Bek.”
“And so if anyone were to learn of your crime, and somehow they let it slip out, or the court ordered access to their alibi archives, not just you would be punished. Your daughters would be sterilized, too.”
Ponter closed his eyes.
“Isn’t that right?” said Selgan.
Ponter’s voice was very soft. “Yes.”
“I asked you earlier if you’d sterilized anyone else in the other world, and you yelled at me.”
Ponter said nothing.
“Do you know why you yelled?”
A long, shuddering sigh escaped from Ponter’s mouth. “I only sterilized the actual perpetrator, not his relatives. You know, I’d never given much thought to the…the righteousness of sterilizing innocents just to improve the gene pool. But…but Hak and I have been working through this Gliksin Bible. In the very first story, all the off spring of the original two humans were cursed because those original humans committed a crime. And that seemed so wrong, so unfair.”
“And as much as you wanted the Gliksin gene pool to be purged of Ruskin’s evil, you couldn’t bring yourself to track down his close relatives,” said Selgan. “For if you did, you’d be admitting that your close relatives—your two daughters—deserved to be punished for the crime you had committed.”
Humans np-2 Page 31
