Robert Sawyer - Hybrids

Veronica lifted her narrow shoulders slightly. “There’s no way to tell, unless he says something.” She pointed at one of the speakers hooked up to the PC. “His mike is open.”

Mary looked at the chamber’s closed door. Part of her hoped Ponter would experience exactly what she had. Even if he dismissed it as an illusion-as doubtless he would-at least he’d be able to understand what had happened to her in there, and what had happened to so many people who had felt the presence of something holy throughout Homo sapiens history.

Of course, maybe he’d be experiencing an extraterrestrial presence. Funny, that: she and Ponter had talked about so many things, but somehow whether or not he believed in aliens had never come up. Maybe to Ponter, to the Neanderthals, the idea of life on other worlds was as silly as the notion of a god. After all, there was a complete absence of credible evidence for extraterrestrial life, at least in Mary’s version of reality. Ponter’s people would say, therefore, that believing in such beings was yet another ridiculous leap of faith…

Mary continued to stare at the sealed door. Surely religion was more than just a neuronal trick, a microelectric self-delusion. Surely it “Okay,” said Veronica. “I’m shutting off the current.” She moved over to the steel door and managed to get it open. “You can come out now.”

Ponter’s first order of business was removing the tight-fitting helmet. He brought his massive hands up to each side of his head and gave what appeared to be a mighty push. The contraption came off, and he handed it to Veronica, then set about rubbing his browridge, as if trying to restore whatever circulation might normally be there.

“Well?” said Mary, when she could wait no longer.

Ponter opened Hak’s faceplate and adjusted some controls, presumably reactivating his cochlear implants.

“ Well? ” repeated Mary.

Ponter shook his head, and for a heartbeat, Mary hoped it was just a further attempt to restore circulation. “Nothing,” he said.

Mary was surprised by how depressed that single word made her feel.

“Nothing?” repeated Veronica, who, for her part, seemed elated by the announcement. “Are you sure?”

Ponter nodded.

“No visual phenomena?” continued Veronica. “No feeling that something was there with you? No sensation of being watched?”

“Nothing at all. Just me, alone with my thoughts.”

“What were you thinking about?” asked Mary. It was possible, after all, that Ponter wouldn’t recognize a religious moment.

“I was thinking about the midday meal,” said Ponter, “wondering what we were going to have. And about the weather, and how soon winter will be here.” He looked at Mary and must have seen the disappointment on her face. “Oh, and you!” said Ponter, quickly, apparently trying to alleviate her pain. “I thought about you, of course!”

Mary smiled wanly and looked away. Surely one test of one Neanderthal didn’t prove anything. Still…

Still, it was provocative that she, a Homo sapiens, had had the deluxe, full-blown experience, and that he, a Homo neanderthalensis, had experienced…

The phrasing came unbidden to her mind, but it was the sad truth.

Ponter Boddit had experienced not a blessed thing.

“ It was that questing spirit that led our ancient ancestors to spread throughout the Old World…”

Veronica Shannon was pacing back and forth in her lab. Mary was sitting on one of the office’s two identical chairs; Ponter had found his chair’s width between its metal arms too narrow for his bulk, and so had perched his rear on the edge of Veronica’s surprisingly tidy desk.

“Do you know anything about psychology, Ponter?” asked Veronica, her hands clasped behind her narrow back.

“Some,” Ponter said. “I studied it when I was learning about computer science at the Academy. It was-what would you call it? — something I had to study along with artificial intelligence.”

“A co-requisite,” supplied Mary.

“In every freshman psych course,” said Veronica, “humans here learn about B. F. Skinner.”

Mary nodded; she’d taken an introductory psychology course herself. “Behaviorism, right?”

“Right,” said Veronica. “Operant conditioning; reinforcement and punishment.”

“Like training dogs,” said Ponter.

“Just so,” said Veronica. She stopped pacing. “Now, please, Mary, don’t say a word. I want to hear Ponter’s response to this without any influence from you.”

Mary nodded.

“All right, Ponter,” said Veronica. “Do you remember your psych studies?”

“No, not really.”

The young redhead looked disappointed.

“But I do,” said Hak, through its external speaker, in its synthesized male voice. “Or, more precisely, I have the equivalent of a textbook on psychology loaded into my memory. It helps me to advise Ponter when he is making an idiot of himself.”

Ponter grinned sheepishly.

“Excellent,” said Veronica. “Okay, here’s the question: what’s the best way to ingrain a behavior into a person? Not something you want to extinguish, but something you want to foster.”

“Reward,” said Hak.

“Reward, yes! But what kind of reward?”

“Consistent.”

Veronica looked as though something incredibly significant had just transpired. “Consistent,” she repeated, as if it were the key to everything. “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes,” said Hak, sounding as puzzled as he ever got.

“It’s not here, you know,” said Veronica. “Consistent reward is not the best way to ingrain a behavior.”

Mary frowned. She’d doubtless known the right answer at one time, but couldn’t dredge it up after all these years. Fortunately, Ponter himself asked the question Veronica was waiting for. “Well, then, what is the best way to ingrain a behavior among your kind of humans?”

“ Intermittent reward,” said Veronica triumphantly.

Ponter frowned. “You mean sometimes rewarding the desired behavior, and sometimes not?”

“Just so!” said Veronica. “That’s precisely right!”

“But that does not make sense,” said Ponter.

“Of course not,” agreed Veronica, grinning widely. “It’s one of the strangest things about Homo sapiens psychology. But it’s absolutely true. The classic example is gambling: if we always win at a game, the game becomes boring for us. But if we only win some of the time, it can become addictive. Or it’s like kids whining to their parents: ‘Buy me this toy!’ ‘Let me stay up late!’ ‘Drive me to the mall.’ It’s the behavior parents hate the most from their kids, but the kids can’t help themselves-not because the whining always works, but because it sometimes works. The unpredictability makes it irresistible for us.”

“That is crazy,” said Ponter.

“Not here,” said Veronica. “Not by definition: the behavior of the majority is never crazy.”

“But…but surely it is simply irritating not to have a predictable outcome.”

“You’d think,” agreed Veronica amiably. “But, again, it’s not-not for us.”

Mary found herself fascinated. “You’re obviously on to something, Veronica. What is it?”

“Everything we’re doing here at the Neuroscience Research Group has been about explaining the classic religious experience. But there are lots of believers who’ve never had a religious experience, and yet they still believe. That’s the hole in our work, the missing piece in a comprehensive explanation of why Homo sapiens believe in God. But this is the answer-do you see? It’s this psychology of reinforcement-this bit of the way our brains are programmed-that makes us susceptible to belief in God. If there really was a God, a rational species would expect rational, predictable behavior from him. But we don’t get that. Sometimes, it seems as though God protects certain people, and at other times, he’ll let a nun fall down an open elevator shaft. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and so we say-”