Hybrids

  “Hardly any,” said Mary, half shouting to be heard above the racket.And it should stay that way , she thought: a world free of crime and violence.

  “So it’s up to us?” said Reuben.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Mary.

  “What about taking some of the Canadian Forces guys with us?” asked Louise.

  “We still don’t know who’s behind this,” said Mary. “It could be Jock acting alone-or it could go all the way to the DND and the Pentagon.”

  Louise looked at Reuben, and Mary saw him draw her close. If they were half as scared as Mary felt, she couldn’t blame them for wanting to hold each other. Mary moved over to the far side of the mud-covered lift and made a show of watching the levels go by, so that Reuben and Louise could have a few minutes to themselves.

  “My English vocabulary is clearly still wanting,” said Christine’s voice through Mary’s cochlear implants. “What does juh-tahm mean?”

  Mary hadn’t made out a thing; evidently the Companion’s microphones were more discerning. She whispered so that the others wouldn’t be able to hear her. “That’s not English, it’s French:’Je t’aime.’ It means ‘I love you.’ Louise told me Reuben always switches to French to say that.”

  “Ah,” said Christine. They continued down, until the lift finally shuddered to a halt. Reuben hoisted the door, revealing the mining drift, heading off into the distance.

  “What time did he go through?” demanded Mary, once they’d finally reached the staging area to the portal, built on a platform in the barrel-shaped six-story-tall Sudbury Neutrino Observatory chamber.

  A Canadian Forces man looked up, eyebrows lifted. “Who?”

  “Jock Krieger,” said Mary. “From the Synergy Group.”

  The man-blond, light-skinned-consulted a clipboard. “We had a John Kevin Krieger go through about three hours ago.”

  “That’s him,” said Mary. “Did he have anything with him?”

  “Forgive me, Dr. Vaughan,” began the officer, “but I really don’t think I’m supposed to divulge-“

  Reuben moved forward and showed him an ID card. “I’m Dr. Montego, the mine-site physician here, and this is a medical emergency. Krieger may be highly infectious.”

  “I should call my superior,” said the soldier.

  “Do that,” snapped Reuben. “But first tell us what he was carrying.”

  The man frowned, thinking. “One of those overnight bags that rolls on wheels.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, a metal box, about the size of a shoebox.”

  Reuben looked at Mary. “Damn,” she said.

  “Was the box put through decontamination?” asked Louise. “Of course,” said the soldier, his tone defensive. “Nothing goes through without being decontaminated.”

  “Good,” said Mary. “Let us through.”

  “Can I see your identification?”

  Mary and Louise slapped their passports down. “All right?” said Mary. “Now, let us through.”

  “What about him?” said the soldier, pointing at Reuben.

  “Damn it, man, I just showed you my Inco card,” said Reuben. “I don’t have my passport with me.”

  “I’m not supposed to-“

  “For Pete’s sake!” said Mary. “This is an emergency!”

  The soldier nodded. “All right,” he said at last. “All right, go ahead.”

  Mary ran on, leading the way to the Derkers tube. As soon as she got to its mouth, she continued on through, and-

  Blue fire.

  Static electricity.

  Another world.

  Mary could hear two sets of footfalls behind her, so she didn’t look back to see if Louise and Reuben were following as she hurried out of the tube. A burly male Neanderthal technician looked up, astonished. Probably no one had ever come running out of the portal before.

  The Neanderthal was one Mary knew on sight. He clearly recognized her, too, but, to Mary’s astonishment, he was making a beeline to tackle Reuben, who was just behind Mary.

  Mary suddenly realized what was going on: the Neanderthal thought Louise and Reuben were chasing Mary, not following her. “No!” shouted Mary. “No, they’re with me! Let them pass!”

  Her own shouting meant that Christine had to wait until she’d finished her exclamation before translating the words, lest her external speaker-capable of a healthy volume, but nowhere near as loud as a shouting human-be drowned out. Mary listened to the Neanderthal words that came from her forearm: “Rak! Ta sooparb nolant, rak! Derpant helk!”

  By about halfway through the translation, the Neanderthal technician tried to abort his run, but he slipped on the polished granite computing-chamber floor and went sliding into Reuben, sending the M.D. flying. Louise tumbled over the Neanderthal, somersaulting onto her back.

  Mary reached down and helped Louise up. Reuben was getting to his feet, too.

  “Lupal!” called the Neanderthal.Sorry!

  Mary headed up the half flight of stairs into the control room, passing another startled Neanderthal, then continued on toward the drift that connected the quantum-computing facility to the rest of the nickel mine.

  “Wait!” shouted the second Neanderthal. “You have to go through decontamination!”

  “There’s no time,” Mary shouted back. “This is an emergency, and-“

  But Reuben interrupted her. “No, Mary, he’s right. Remember how sick Ponter got when he first came to our side? We’re trying to prevent a plague, not start one.”

  Mary swore. “All right,” she said. She looked at Reuben and Louise, the black Jamaican-Canadian with the shaved head and the pale Québecois with the long brunette hair. They’d doubtless seen each other naked many times, but neither had seen Mary that way. “Strip down,” she said decisively. “Everything off, including watches and jewelry.”

  Louise and Reuben were used to decontamination procedures from working at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which had been kept in clean-room conditions until Ponter’s original arrival destroyed the detector. Still, they each hesitated for a moment. Mary started undoing her blouse. “Come on,” she said. “There’s no time to waste.”

  Reuben and Louise began removing their clothing.

  “Just leave your clothes here,” said Mary as she tossed her panties into a round hamper. “We can pick up Neanderthal clothing in the next room.”

  Mary, now totally nude, entered the cylindrical decontamination chamber. It had been designed to comfortably hold one adult Neanderthal, but at Mary’s insistence, all three of them piled into it, in order to save time. Mary was too nervous to be embarrassed as Louise’s backside pressed against her own, or as Reuben, who had ended up facing toward Mary, was pressed face first against her breasts.

  Mary pulled out a control bud. The floor started slowly rotating, and lasers began firing. Mary was used to the procedure by now, but she could hear Louise gasp as the formidable-looking beam emitters hummed to life.

  “It’s okay,” said Mary, trying to ignore the part of her brain that was calculating exactly what portions of Reuben were pressed up against her. “It’s perfectly safe. The lasers know which proteins should be in a human body-including those in intestinal bacteria, and so on-and they pass right through them. But they break down foreign proteins, killing any pathogens.”

  Mary could feel Louise squirm slightly, but she sounded fascinated. “What kind of lasers can do that?”

  “Quantum-cascade lasers,” said Mary, parroting something she’d heard Ponter say. “In the trillion-cycles-per-beat range.”

  “Tunable terahertz lasers!” exclaimed Louise. “Yes, of course. Something like thatcould selectively interact with large molecules. How long does the process take?”

  “About three minutes,” said Mary.

  “Say, Mary,” said Reuben. “You should have someone look at that mole on your left shoulder...”

  “What?” said Mary. “Jesus, Reuben, this isn’t the time-“ But she cut herself off
, realizing he was doing exactly what Louise had just been doing: retreating into a technical mind-set, trying to keep professional. After all, Reuben was buck naked with two women, one of whom was his lover and the other his lover’s friend. The last thing he-or Mary-needed right now was for him to be composing a letter toPenthouse in his head. “I’ll see a dermatologist,” she said, softening her tone. She shrugged as much as the tight confines would allow. “Damned ozone layer...”

  Mary rotated her head slightly. “Louise, there should be a square light above the door in front of you. Do you see it?”

  “Yes. Oh, it’s green! Good.” She shifted slightly, as if making to exit.

  “Freeze!” snapped Mary. “Green is the Neanderthal color for ‘halt’-green meat is rotten meat. When it turns red, that means it’s okay to proceed. Let us know as soon as it does.”

  Louise nodded; Mary could feel the back of the younger woman’s head going up and down. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring along two people who had had no preparation for the Neanderthal world. After all, it could be-

  “Red!” exclaimed Louise. “The light is red!”

  “All right,” said Mary. “Push the door open. The handle looks like a starfish-see it? It slides up to unlatch the door.”

  Mary could feel Louise squirming some more, and then suddenly the pressure was off Mary’s back as Louise stepped out of the chamber. Mary took a backward step, turned around, and hurried out of the chamber as well. “This way!” she shouted.

  They entered a room whose walls were covered with cubic cubbyholes, each containing a set of Neanderthal clothes. “Those should fit you, Reuben,” said Mary, pointing at one set. “And those should do for you,” she said, indicating another.

  Mary was an old hand now at getting into Barast garments, but Louise and Reuben were clearly baffled. Mary shouted instructions at Reuben, and bent down next to Louise, who was having trouble with the footwear built into the Neanderthal pants. Mary did up her instep and ankle ties for her.

  They then hurried out into the drift. Mary had hoped there would be a vehicle of some sort waiting there, but, of course, if there had been one, Jock himself would have taken it.

  A three-kilometer-long run, thought Mary. Sweet Jesus, she hadn’t done anything like that since her undergrad days, and even then she’d been terrible. But adrenaline was pumping through her like there was no tomorrow-which, she knew, might very well be the case for the Barasts. She ran off down the tunnel, its floor covered with flat wooden boards.

  There was much less illumination in this tunnel than in the corresponding one on the Gliksin side. The Neanderthals used robots for mining that didn’t need much light. For that matter, neither did Neanderthals, whose sense of smell gave them an excellent mental picture of what was going on around them.

  “How...far...is...it?” called Louise from behind.

  Despite the urgency of the situation, Mary was pleased to hear the young woman sounding winded already. “Three thousand meters,” Mary shouted back.

  Something suddenly cut across the path in front of Mary. If her heart hadn’t already been pounding, it probably would have started then. But it was just a mining robot. She called out that fact so that Reuben and Louise wouldn’t be startled, then she found herself shouting to the robot, “Wait! Come back here!”

  Christine obliged with a translation, and a moment later the robot reappeared. Mary got a good look at it now: a low, flat, six-legged contraption, like a two-meter-long crab, with conical bores and hemispherical scoops projecting forward on articulated arms. The thing was built for hauling rock, for Christ’s sake. Ithad to be strong enough. “Can you carry us?” asked Mary.

  Her Companion translated the words, and a red light winked on the robot’s shell. “This model is incapable of speech,” added Christine, “but the answer is yes.”

  Mary clambered up onto the machine’s silver carapace, severely banging her right shin as she did so. She turned back to Reuben and Louise, who had come to a stop behind her. “All aboard!”

  Louise and Reuben exchanged astonished looks but they soon hauled themselves onto the robot’s back, as well. Mary slapped the thing’s side. “Giddyup!”

  Her Companion probably didn’t know that word, but surely understood Mary’s intention and conveyed it to the robot. Its six legs flexed once, as if to gauge how much weight it was now carrying, and then it set off in the direction they’d been heading, moving fast enough that Mary felt hot wind on her face. There were puddles of muddy water at various points, and every time one of the robot’s splayed feet came down into one, Mary and the others got splashed with dirty liquid.

  “Hold on!” Mary called out repeatedly, although she doubted Reuben and Louise really needed any urging to do just that. Still, Mary herself felt as though she was going to be bounced right off the carapace a few times, and her bladder was objecting strenuously to the abuse.

  They passed another mining robot-a spindly, upright model that reminded Mary a bit of a praying mantis-and then, about 600 meters farther along, they passed a pair of male Neanderthals going in the other direction, who leaped out of the way of the charging robot just in time.

  Finally, they made it to the elevator station. Thank God those two Neanderthals had just come down: the lift was still at the bottom. Mary scrambled off the robotic crab and dashed over to the elevator. Louise and Reuben followed, and as soon as they were all in the cylindrical car, Mary stomped on the floor-mounted switch that started the upward journey.

  Mary took a moment to see how the others were doing; everything had a slightly greenish cast under the luciferin lights. For once, Louise looked nothing like a fashion model: sweat was running down her face, her hair was matted with mud, and her Neanderthal clothing was absolutely filthy with mud and what, after a second, Mary realized was grease, or something akin to it, from the robot.

  Reuben was in even worse shape. The robot had bounded along, and at some point Reuben’s bald head must have hit the mine’s roof. He had a nasty gash running along his pate, and was gingerly probing it with his fingers, wincing while he did so.

  “All right,” said Mary. “We’ve got a few minutes until the elevator reaches the surface. There will be an attendant or two there, and they won’t let you pass without having temporary Companions strapped on. You might as well allow that-it’ll take less time than to convince those guys that it’s an emergency. And, besides, Companions let us communicate with each other, and with any other Neanderthals we need to speak to. All the ones stored here at the mine have the translation database.”

  Mary knew the elevator cab was gently corkscrewing through 180 degrees as it rose up the shaft, but she doubted Louise and Reuben could tell. She lifted her forearm and spoke to it. “Have you reacquired the planetary information network yet, Christine?”

  “No,” said the voice coming from Mary’s cochlear implants. “I probably won’t be able to reconnect until we are only a short distance beneath the surface, but I will keep-wait, wait. Yes, I’ve got it. I am on the network.”

  “Great!” said Mary. “Get me Ponter.”

  “Calling,” said the implant. “No answer yet.”

  “Come on, Ponter,” urged Mary. “Come on...”

  “Mare!” came Ponter’s voice, as translated and imitated by Christine. “What are you doing back on this side? “Two don’t become One until the day after tomorrow, and-“

  “Ponter,shush! “ said Mary. “Jock Krieger has made it over here. We have to find him and stop him.”

  “He will be wearing a strap-on Companion,” said Ponter. “I saw the arguments in the High Gray Council on my Voyeur after Gliksins were let through before without them. Trust me: that is never going to happen again.”

  Mary shook her head. “He’s no idiot. It’s certainly worth getting an order to triangulate on his Companion, but I bet he’s removed it somehow.”

  “He can’t have,” said Ponter. “That would have set off numerous alarms. And he certainly can’t
be just wandering around on his own. He’s probably with Bedros or some other official. No, we should be able to locate him. Where are you?”

  The elevator cab shuddered to a halt, and Mary gestured for Reuben and Louise to hurry out. “We’ve just exited into the equipment room above the Debral nickel mine. Louise and Reuben are with me.”

  “I’m at home,” said Ponter. “Hak, call for travel cubes for Mare and for me, and contact an adjudicator.” Mary heard Hak acknowledge the command, then Ponter continued: “Any idea where Krieger might be?”

  “At the moment, no,” said Mary, “although my guess is that he plans to release the virus in the Center when Two are One.”

  “That makes sense,” said Ponter. “It’s the time of maximum population density, and there’s lots of intercity travel when its over, so-“

  Hak’s voice came on, interrupting, untranslated, speaking to Ponter.

  “Mare,” said Ponter, a moment later. “Hak has reached an adjudicator for me. When your travel cube arrives, head to the alibi-archive pavilion in the Center. I’ll meet you there.”

  A male Neanderthal attendant was now clamping a temporary Companion onto Reuben’s left forearm. A moment later he came over to Louise and attached one to her, as well. Mary held up her own arm to show the attendant that she had a permanent unit. “Okay,” she said to Louise and Reuben. “Grab some coats and let’s go!”

  It had snowed since Mary was last here; the glare from the white ground was fierce. “The adjudicator is getting hold of two more adjudicators,” Ponter said, coming back on-line, “so that they can order judicial scrutiny of Jock’s Companion’s transmissions. Once that’s done, they can triangulate on him.”

  “Christ,” said Mary, holding a hand over her eyes and scanning the horizon for the travel cube. “How long will that take?”

  “Not long, hopefully,” said Ponter.

  “All right,” said Mary. “I’ll call you back. Christine, get me Bandra.”

  “Healthy day,” said Bandra’s voice.

  “Bandra, honey, this is Mary.”

  “Mare, my darling! I didn’t expect you to be back until the day after tomorrow. I’m so nervous about Two becoming One. If Harb-“