Humans

  “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 Ponter, “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 forthat . 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 beenseared 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 waswrong,”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 knewpreciselywhat 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?”
br />   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 thoughtmoreof 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 trailed 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 criminalandeveryone 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 sayat leastfifty 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. “Ionlysterilized the actual perpetrator, not his relatives. You know, I’d never given much thought to the...the righteousnessof sterilizing innocents just to improve the gene pool. But...but Hak and I havebeen 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 thatyourclose relatives-your two daughters-deserved to be punished for the crime youhad committed.”

  “They areinnocent,”said Ponter. “No matter how wrong what I did was, they do not deserve to suffer for it.”

  “And yet they will if you come forward and admit your crime.”

  Ponter nodded.

  “And so what do you intend to do?”

  Ponter lifted his massive shoulders. “Carry this secret with me until I die.”

  “And then?”

  “I-I beg your pardon?”

  “After you are dead, then what?”

  “Then...thennothing.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Of course. I mean, yes, I have been studying this Bible, and I know Mare is sane and intelligent and not delusional, but...”

  “You have no doubt that she is wrong? No doubt that there is nothing after death?”

  “Well....”

  “Yes?”

  “No. Forget it.”

  Selgan frowned, deciding it wasn’t yet quite time to press this point. “Have you wondered aboutwhyMare is attracted to you?”

  Ponter looked away.

  “I heard what you said earlier about them also being humans. But, still, you are less like her than any other human she had ever met to that point.”

  “Physically, perhaps,” said Ponter. “But mentally, emotionally, we have much in common.”

  “Still,” said Selgan, “since Mare had been hurt by a male of her own species, she might-“

  “Don’t you think that’s already occurred to me?” snapped Ponter.

  “Speak it aloud, Ponter. Get it out in the open.”

  Ponter snorted. “She might be attracted to me because in her eyes I amnothuman-not one of those who hurt her.”

  Selgan was quiet for a few beats. “It’s a thought worth reflecting on.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ponter. “It doesn’t matter one bit. Iloveher. And she loves me. Nothing besides those two facts is important.”

  “Very well,” said Selgan. “Very well.” He paused again, and let his tone sound absent, as if an odd thought had just occurred to him, rather than that he’d been waiting for the right moment to present this. “And, say, have you given any thought as to why you are attracted to her?”

  Ponter rolled his eyes. “Personality sculptors!” he said. “You’re about to tell me that she reminds me of Klast in some way. But you couldn’t be more wrong. She doesn’t look anything like Klast. Her personality is completely different. Mare and Klast havenothingin common.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Selgan, gesturing with his hand as if to dismiss the notion. “I mean, how could they? They aren’t even members of the samespecies...”

  “That’s right,” said Ponter, folding his arms across his chest.

  “And they come from completely different belief systems.”

  “Exactly.”

  Selgan shook his head. “Such a bizarre notion, isn’t it? This idea of a life after death...”

  Ponter said nothing.

  “Do you ever contemplate it? Ever wonder if, just maybe...” Selgan trailed off and waited patiently for Ponter to fill the void.

  “Well,” said Ponter at last, “itisan appealing concept. Ever since Mare first told me of it, I’ve been thinking about it.” Ponter raised his hands. “I mean, sure, sure, I know that there is no afterlife-at least not for me. But...”

  “But she lives in an alternative physical plane,” supplied Selgan. “Another universe. A universe where thingsmightbe different.”

  Ponter’s head moved vertically in the slightest of nods.

  “And she isn’t even Barast, is she? She belongs to another species. Just becausewedon’t have these-what do they call them? These immortal souls? Just because wedon’t have immortal souls, doesn’t mean that they don’t, does it?”

  “Do you have a point?” snapped Ponter.

  “Always,” said Selgan. “You lost your own woman-mate twenty-odd months ago.” He paused, and made his voice as soft as he could. “Mare is not the only one recovering from a trauma.”

  Ponter lifted his eyebrow. “Granted. But I hardly see how Klast’s death would propel me into the arms of a woman from another world.”

  There was silence for an extended time. Finally, Hak, wh
o had been quiet all through the therapy to this point, addressed Selgan through his external speaker. “Do you want me to tell him?”

  “I’ll do it,” said Selgan. “Ponter, please take this gently, but...well, you have told me of Gliksin beliefs.”

  “What about them?” said Ponter, an edge still in his voice.

  “They believe the dead are not really dead. They believe that the consciousness of the individual lives on after the body.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe you’re looking to insulate yourself from the same kind of pain that you suffered when Klast died. If your woman-mate believed in this...this immortality of the mind, or if you thought, however irrationally, that she might actuallyhavesuch immortality, then...” Selgan trailed off, inviting Ponter to finish the thought for him.

  Ponter sighed, then did so. “Then if the unthinkable were to happen, and I were to lose my woman-mate again, I might not be so devastated, since she might not really be totally gone.”

  Selgan lifted his eyebrow and both shoulders slightly. “Exactly.”

  Ponter rose to his feet. “Thank you for your time, Scholar Selgan. Healthy day.”

  “I’m not sure we’re finished yet,” said Selgan. “Where are you going?”

  “To do something I should have done long ago,” said Ponter, marching out of the circular room.

  Louise Benoît came into Jock Krieger’s office at the Synergy Group. Jock didn’t have any geologists on staff, but Louise was a physicist, and she’d spent all that time working down at the bottom of the Creighton Mine, so he’d assigned this task to her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ve worked it out, I think.” She spread two large charts on the worktable in Jock’s office. Jock got up from behind his desk and joined Louise at the table.

  “This one,” she said, pointing a red-painted fingernail at the chart on the left, “is a standard paleomagnetic chronology made by our people.”

  Jock nodded.

  “And this one”-she indicated the other chart, which was filled with strange symbols-“is the comparable chart we got from the Neanderthals.”

  Even though Mary Vaughan had found no evidence that the Neanderthal magnetic field really had reversed, Jock had used his clout to make the swapping of paleomagnetic information a top priority. If the Neanderthals were wrong about the magnetic field collapsing rapidly, well, then Jock would know he was worrying for nothing. But he wanted to be sure.