Humans

by neetha Napew

  He looked again at the Peace Tower, tall and brown with some sort of timepiece near its apex, right at the heart of the seat of government for this country he was in. Perhaps...perhaps the Gliksins had changed. They’d created this organization he would visit tomorrow, this United Nations, specifically, so its charter had said, tosave succeeding generations from the scourge of war.

  Ponter left the window open, moved over to his bed-he doubted he’d ever get used to these elevated, soft beds the Gliksins favored-and lay down on his back, arms behind his head, staring at the swirling plaster patterns on the ceiling.

  Ponter and Tukana, accompanied by Hélène Gagné and two plainclothes RCMP officers who were serving as bodyguards, were taken by limousine to Ottawa International Airport. The two Neanderthals had both been exhilarated by their earlier flight from Sudbury to Ottawa: neither of them had ever seen the terrain of Northern Ontario-which was the same mixture of pines and lakes and shield rocks as in their version of Earth-from such a wonderful vantage point.

  At first, Ponter had felt some inferiority in light of all these advanced Gliksin technologies-airplanes and even spaceships. But his research last night had made him realize why these humans had progressed so much in these areas; he’d gone back to exploring various articles in the encyclopedia.

  Itwas a central concept for them, deserving of its short designation.

  War had made-

  Even the phrases they used to describe these breakthroughs were martial.

  War had made the conquest of air, the conquest of space, possible.

  They pulled up to the terminal, Hak noting the irony of this term’s double meaning. Ponter had thought the building the miners used for changing clothes was huge, but this massive structure was the largest enclosed interior space he had ever seen. And it was packed with people, and their pheromones. Ponter felt woozy, and also rather embarrassed: many people were openly staring at him and Tukana.

  They dealt with some paperwork formalities-Ponter didn’t quite follow the details-and then were led to an odd oversize wicket. Hélène told him and Tukana to remove their medical belts and send them down a conveyor, and also to empty the storage pouches on their clothing, which they did. And then, at Hélène’s gesture, Ponter walked through the wicket.

  An alarm immediately went off, startling Ponter.

  Suddenly a uniformed man was waving some sort of probe over Ponter’s body. The probe shrieked when passing over Ponter’s left forearm. “Roll up you sleeve,” said the man.

  Ponter had never heard that expression before, but he guessed its meaning. He undid the closures on his sleeve, and folded back the fabric, revealing the metal and plastic rectangle of his Companion.

  The man stared for a time at this, and then, almost to himself, he said, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology.”

  “Pardon?” asked Ponter.

  “Nothing,” said the man. “You can go on ahead.”

  The flight to New York City was quite brief-not even half a daytenth. Hélène had warned Ponter both on this flight and yesterday’s that he might experience some discomfort as the plane descended, since the air pressure would be changing quickly, but Ponter didn’t feel a thing. Perhaps it was a peculiarly Gliksin affliction, caused by their tiny sinus cavities.

  The plane, according to an announcement over the speakers, had to divert to the south and fly directly over the island known as Manhattan, to accommodate other air traffic.Crowded skies, thought Ponter.How astonishing! Still, Ponter was delighted. After having his fill of hearing about war last night, he’d turned to the encyclopedia’s entry on New York City. There were, he discovered, many great human-made landmarks here, and it would be wonderful to get to see them from the air. He looked for, and found, the giant green woman with the dour expression, holding aloft a torch. But, try as he might, he couldn’t spot the two towers that supposedly rose above the surrounding buildings, each an incredible hundred and ten stories tall.

  When they were at last on the ground, Ponter asked Hélène about the missing-he found the word poetic-“skyscrapers.”

  Hélène looked very uncomfortable. “Ah,” she said. “You mean the World Trade Center towers. Used to be two of the tallest buildings on the planet, but...” Her voice cracked slightly, which surprised Ponter. “I-I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but...” Another hesitation. “But they were destroyed by terrorists.”

  Ponter’s Companion bleeped, but Tukana, who had clearly been doing research of her own, tipped her head toward Ponter. “Gliksin outlaws who use violence to try to force political or social change.”

  Ponter shook his head, once more astonished by the universe he’d come to. “How were the buildings destroyed?”

  Hélène hesitated yet again before responding. “Two large airplanes with tanks full of fuel were hijacked and deliberately crashed into them.”

  Ponter could think of no reply. But he was glad he hadn’t learned this until he was safely back on the ground.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When she had been eighteen, Mary’s boyfriend Donny had gone to Los Angeles with his family for the summer. That had been before widespread e-mail or even cheap long-distance calling, but they’d kept in touch by letter. Don had sent long, densely packed ones at first, full of news and declarations of how much he missed her, how much he loved her.

  But as the pleasant days of June gave way to the heat of July, and the sweltering humidity of August, the letters grew less frequent, and less densely packed. Mary remembered vividly the day one arrived with just Don’s name at the end, standing there alone, not preceded by the word “Love.”

  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Perhaps it does in some cases. Perhaps, indeed, it had in the current case. It had been weeks since Mary had last seen Ponter Boddit, and she felt at least as much, if not more, affection for him than she had when he departed.

  But therewas a difference. After Ponter had left, Mary had gone back to being alone-not even a free woman, for she and Colm were only separated; divorce meant excommunication for both of them, and the process of pursuing an annulment had seemed hypocritical.

  But Ponter had only been alone when he was here. Yes, he was a widower, although that wasn’t the term he used for it, but when he’d gone back to his universe, he’d been surrounded by family: his man-mate Adikor Huld-Mary had committed the names to memory-and his two daughters, eighteen-year-old Jasmel Ket and eight-year-old Megameg Bek.

  Mary was in an anteroom on the eighteenth floor of the Secretariat building at the UN, waiting for Ponter to get out of a meeting, so she could at last rendezvous with him. As she sat in a chair, too nervous to read, her stomach churned, and all sorts of thoughts went through her head. Would Ponter even recognize her? He must have seen plenty of late-thirties blondes here in New York; would all similarly colored Gliksins look alike to him? Besides, she’d cut her hair since Sudbury, and, if anything, was a pound or two heavier, God damn it.

  And, after all, it had beenshe who had rejected him last time. Perhaps she was the last person Ponter wanted to see, now that he had returned to this Earth.

  But no. No. He had understood that she was still dealing with the aftermath of the rape, that her inability to respond to his advance had nothing to do with him. Yes, surely, he had understood that.

  And yet, there was-

  Mary’s heart jumped. The door was opening, and the muffled voices within suddenly became distinct. Mary leapt to her feet, her hands clasped nervously in front of her.

  “-and I’ll get you those figures,” said an Asian diplomat, talking over his shoulder to a silver-haired female Neanderthal who must be Ambassador Tukana Prat.

  Two moreH. sap diplomats shouldered through the door, and then-

  And then, there was Ponter Boddit, his dark blond hair parted precisely in the center, his arresting golden brown eyes obvious even at this distance. Mary lifted her eyebrows, but Ponter hadn’t caught sight, or wind, of her just yet. He was
speaking to one of the other diplomats, saying something about geological surveys, and-

  And then his eyes did fall on Mary, and she smiled nervously, and he did a neat little sideways step, bypassing the people in front of him, and his face split into that foot-wide grin Mary knew so well, and he closed the distance between him and her, and swept her into his arms, hugging her close to his massive chest.

  “Mare!” exclaimed Ponter, in his own voice, and then, with Hak translating, “How wonderful to see you!”

  “Welcome back,” said Mary, her cheek against his. “Welcome back!”

  “What are you doing here in New York?” asked Ponter.

  Mary could have said that she’d just come in hopes of collecting a DNA sample from Tukana; it was part of the truth, and it afforded an easy out, a face-saving explanation, but...

  “I came to see you,” she said simply.

  Ponter squeezed her again, then relaxed his grip and stepped back, putting a hand on each of her shoulders, looking her in the face. “I am so glad,” he said.

  Mary became uncomfortably aware that the other people in the room were looking at her and Ponter, and, indeed, after a moment, Tukana cleared her throat, just as a Gliksin might.

  Ponter turned his head and looked at the ambassador. “Oh,” he said. “Forgive me. This is Mare Vaughan, the geneticist I told you about.”

  Mary stepped forward, extending her hand. “Hello, Madam Ambassador.”

  Tukana took Mary’s hand and shook it with astonishing strength. Mary reflected that if she’d been sufficiently sneaky, she could have collected a few of Tukana’s cells just in the process of shaking hands. “It is a pleasure to meet you,” said the older Neanderthal. “I am Tukana Prat.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Mary, smiling. “I’ve been reading about you in the papers.”

  “My feeling,” said Tukana, a sly grin on her wide face, “is that perhaps you and Envoy Boddit would like some time alone together.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to one of the Gliksin diplomats. “Shall we go to your office and look over those population-dispersal figures?”

  The diplomat nodded, and the rest of the party left the room, leaving Mary and Ponter alone.

  “So,” said Ponter, sweeping Mary into another hug. “How are you?”

  Mary couldn’t tell if it was her heart, or Ponter’s, that was jack hammering. “Now that you’re here,” she said, “I’m fine.”

  The General Assembly hall of the United Nations consisted of a series of concentric semicircles facing a central stage. Ponter was baffled at the mix of faces he saw. In Canada, he’d noted a range of skin colors and facial types, and, so far, his experience of the United States had been similar. Here, in this massive chamber, he saw the same wide variety of coloration, which Lurt had told him almost certainly had resulted from prolonged periods of geographic isolation for each color group, assuming, as Mare had asserted, that they were indeed cross fertile.

  But here, all the representatives from each country were the same color-even Canada and the United States had only light-skinned representatives at this United Nations.

  More: Ponter was used to seeing councils on his world consisting entirely of members of one gender, or councils with exactly equal numbers of males and females. But here there were perhaps ninety-five percent males, with only a smattering of females. Was it possible, wondered Ponter, that there was a hierarchy among the “races,” as Mare had called them, with the light-skinned holding the ultimate power? Likewise, was it conceivable that Gliksin females were accorded lesser status, and only rarely allowed into the most senior circles?

  Another thing that surprised Ponter was howyoung most of the diplomats were. Why, some were even younger than Ponter himself! Mare had once mentioned that she dyed her hair to hide its gray, a notion that was incredible to Ponter; to hide gray was to hide wisdom. Male Gliksins, he’d noticed, were less prone to coloring their hair-perhaps their wisdom was more often in question. But, still, there were few gray hairs in the group he was now seeing.

  Ponter’s concerns were allayed a bit when the top official, whose title was the puzzling “amanuensis-high-warrior,” turned out to be a dark-skinned man of at least passable months. Hé-lène Gagné had whispered to Ponter that this man had recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, whatever that might be.

  Ponter was seated with the Canadian delegation. Sadly, Mare had been denied a place on the main floor, although she was supposedly watching from a spectators’ gallery high overhead. Above the podium, Ponter saw a giant version of the pale blue United Nations crest. Although intellectually Ponter had accepted the reality of where he was, there was still an emotional part of him that thought this strange world had nothing to do withhis Earth. But the crest had at its center a polar-projection map of Earth, looking just like similar maps Ponter had seen in his own world. Surrounding it, though, were branches of some sort of plant. Ponter asked Hélène the significance of the branches; she said they were olive leaves, a sign of peace.

  Peace Tower. Peace Prize. Leaves of Peace. For all their warmongering, it seemed peace was very much on the minds of Gliksins, and Ponter was reassured slightly to note that the word for peace contained no more syllables than did the word for war.

  After a long opening statement by the amanuensis-high-warrior, it was at last Tukana’s turn to speak. She got to her feet and walked to the podium while the assembled Gliksins did that thing they called “applauding.” Tukana was carrying a small polished-wood box, which she placed on the podium.

  The Secretary-General shook her hand and then vacated the stage.

  “Hello, peoples of this Earth,” said Tukana’s implant, translating for her; it had taken some doing by Hélène to convey to the Companion the notion of “peoples,” a plural form of a word that already was a plural. “I greet you on behalf of the High Gray Council of my world, and of that world’s people.”

  Tukana continued, nodding in Ponter’s direction: “The first time one of us came here, it was an unexpected accident. This time, it is deliberate and with great anticipation on the part of my people. We look forward to establishing ongoing peaceful relations with every one of the nations represented here...”

  She went on in that vein for some time, saying little of substance. But the Gliksins, Ponter noted, were hanging on her every word, although some of those closest to him were discreetly examining Ponter, apparently fascinated by his appearance.

  “And now,” said Tukana, it apparently being time to get down to the marrow, “it is my pleasure to undertake the first-ever trade between our two peoples.” She turned to the dark-skinned man, who was standing at the side of the stage. “If you would, please...?”

  The amanuensis-high-warrior returned to the stage, carrying a small wooden box of his own. Tukana opened her box, which had recently been sent over from the other side.

  “In this box,” said Tukana, “is an exact cast of the skull from our world of the anthropological specimen whose counterpart on this version of Earth is dubbed AL 288-1, an individual of what you callAustralopithecus afarensis known here as Lucy”-Tukana had told her Companion to add theee phoneme to the proper noun.

  There was a murmur through the chamber. The significance had been explained to Ponter. On the two versions of Earth, originals of this particular adult female’s skeleton had eroded out of the ground-in what the Gliksins called Hadar, Ethiopia, on this Earth, and the corresponding spot in northeast Kakarana on Ponter’s version. But the weather patterns had not been identical. On this version, the one of New York and Toronto and Sudbury, the cranium of this fossil had been badly damaged by erosion before Donald Johanson found it in the year the Gliksins called 1974. But on Tukana and Ponter’s version, the skeleton had been found before much erosion damage had occurred. It was a clever offering, Ponter knew, underscoring that all the same mineral and fossil deposits existed on both worlds, and that a swapping of identified locations would doubtless be mutually beneficial.

  “I accep
t this with gratitude on behalf of all the peoples of this Earth,” said the dark-skinned man. “And, in exchange, please accept this gift from us.” He handed his box to Tukana. She opened it, and lifted out what appeared to be a rock encased in clear plastic. “This specimen of breccia was collected by James Irwin at Hadley Rille.” He paused dramatically, obviously enjoying Tukana’s lack of comprehension. “Hadley Rille,” explained the amanuensis-high-warrior, “is on the moon.”

  Tukana’s eyes went wide. Ponter was equally astounded. A piece of the moon! How could he have doubted that they were doing the right thing having relations with these humans!

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mary came running down the curving staircase to the United Nations lobby. Ponter and Tukana were leaving the General Assembly hall, surrounded by a quartet of uniformed police officers, obviously serving as bodyguards. Mary hurried toward the two Neanderthals, but one of the cops moved to block her way. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said.

  Mary shouted out Ponter’s name, and Ponter looked up at her. “Mare!” he responded in his own voice, then, through his translator, “It is acceptable for her to pass, Officer. She is my friend.”

  The cop nodded and stood aside. Mary surged in, closing the distance between her and Ponter. “How do you think it went?” asked Ponter.

  “Brilliantly,” said Mary. “Whose idea was it to get a cast of your version of Lucy’s skull?”

  “One of the Inco geologists.”

  Mary shook her head in wonder. “A perfect choice.”

  Ambassador Prat turned to Mary. “We are about to leave this facility in order to eat. Will you please join us?”

  Mary smiled. The older Neanderthal might not be the most practiced diplomat, but she certainly was gracious. “I’d love to,” said Mary.