Robert Sawyer - Hybrids

“There never were any other races. Although we do have some scientists in what you call Africa and Central America, they are hardly permanent residents there.” He raised a hand. “And without races, we obviously have never had racial discrimination. But you do: here, racial characteristics correlate with the likelihood of execution for serious crimes, is that not correct?”

“Blacks are more frequently sentenced to death than are whites, yes.” Mary decided not to add, Especially when they kill a white.

“Perhaps because we never had such divisions, the idea of sterilizing a segment of humanity on an arbitrary basis never occurred to us.”

A couple of miners were approaching them, going the other way. They openly stared at Ponter-although the sight of a woman down here was probably almost as rare, Mary thought. Once they had passed, Mary continued. “But surely, even without visible races, there must have been a desire to favor those who are closely related to you over those who are not. That’s kin selection, and it exists throughout the animal kingdom. I can’t imagine that Neanderthals are exempt.”

“Exempt? Perhaps not. But remember that our family relations are more…elaborate, shall we say, than yours, or, for that matter, than most other animals. We have a never-ending family chain of man-mates and woman-mates, and because of our system of Two becoming One only temporarily, we do not have the difficulty in determining paternity that concerns your kind so much.” He paused, then smiled. “Anyway, as to the price of tea in China, my people find your notion of execution or decades of imprisonment to be more cruel than our sterilization and judicial scrutiny.”

It took Mary a moment to remember what “judicial scrutiny” was: the process of viewing the transmissions made by a Companion implant, so that everything an individual said and did could be monitored as it happened. “I don’t know,” said Mary. “I mean, like I said in the car, I practice birth control, which is something that my religion forbids, so I can’t claim that I’m morally opposed to anything that might interfere with conception. But…but to prevent innocent people from reproducing seems wrong.”

“You would accept the sterilization of the actual perpetrator, but not his or her siblings, parents, and offspring, as an alternative to execution or imprisonment?”

“Perhaps. I don’t know. Under certain circumstances, maybe. If the convicted person so chose.”

Ponter’s golden eyes went wide. “You would let the guilty party choose its punishment?”

Mary felt her heart flutter. Was the choice of “its” Hak’s attempt to render the gender-neutral personal pronoun that existed in the Barast language but not in English, or was it Ponter again dehumanizing a criminal? “Under many circumstances, I would give the criminal a choice of a range of appropriate punishments, yes,” she said, thinking back to Father Caldicott giving her a choice of penances when she’d made her last confession.

“But certainly in some cases,” said Ponter, “only one punishment is suitable. For instance, in…”

Ponter stopped cold. “What?” said Mary.

“No, nothing.”

Mary frowned. “You’re talking about rape.”

Ponter was silent for a long time, looking down at the muddy tunnel floor as he walked along. At first, Mary thought she’d offended him by suggesting he’d be so insensitive as to bring up that uncomfortable topic again, but his next words, when he finally did speak, startled her even more. “Actually,” he said, “I am not just talking about rape in general.” He looked at her, then back at the ground, a mishmash of boot prints illuminated by the beam from the headlight on his hardhat. “I am talking about your rape.”

Mary could feel her heart pounding. “What do you mean?”

“I-it is our way, among our people, not to have secrets between partners, and yet…”

“Yes?”

He turned around and looked back down the drift, making sure they were alone. “There is something I have not told you-something I have not told anyone, except…”

“Except who? Adikor?”

But Ponter shook his head. “No. No, he does not know of this, either. The one person who does know is a male of my kind, a man named Jurard Selgan.”

Mary frowned. “I don’t remember you ever mentioning that name before.”

“I have not,” said Ponter. “He…he is a personality sculptor.”

“A what?” said Mary.

“A-he works with those who wish to modify their…their mental state.”

“You mean a psychiatrist?”

Ponter tipped his head, clearly listening to Hak speak to him through his cochlear implants. The Companion was no doubt breaking the term Mary had presented into its etymological root; ironically, “psyche” was the closest approximation to “soul” the Neanderthals had. At last Ponter nodded. “A comparable specialist, yes.”

Mary’s spine stiffened even as she walked along. “You’ve been seeing a psychiatrist? About my rape?” She’d thought he’d understood, damn it all. Yes, Homo sapiens males were notorious for looking at their spouses differently after they’d been raped, wondering if it had somehow been the woman’s fault, if she’d somehow secretly wanted it But Ponter…

Ponter was supposed to understand!

They marched on in silence for a while, their helmet beams lighting the way.

Reflecting on it, Ponter had seemed desperate to know the details of Mary’s rape. At the police station, Ponter had grabbed the sealed evidence bag containing specimens from Qaiser Remtulla’s rape, ripped it open, and inhaled the scent within, identifying one of Mary’s colleagues, Cornelius Ruskin, as the perpetrator.

Mary looked over at Ponter, a dark, hulking form against the rock wall. “It wasn’t my fault,” said Mary.

“What?” said Ponter. “No, I know that.”

“I didn’t want it. I didn’t ask for it.”

“Yes, yes, I do understand that.”

“Then why are you seeing this-this ‘personality sculptor’?”

“I am not seeing him anymore. It is just that-”

Ponter stopped, and Mary looked over. He had his head tilted, listening to Hak, and after a moment, he made the smallest of nods, a signal intended for the Companion, not for her.

“It’s just what? ” said Mary.

“Nothing,” said Ponter. “I am sorry I brought the topic up.”

So am I, thought Mary as they continued on through the darkness.

“ It was that questing spirit that led Vikings to come to North America a thousand years ago, that drove the Nin?a, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria to cross the Atlantic five hundred years ago…”

At last they reached the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Ponter and Mary made their way through the massive facility-all hanging pipes and massive tanks-to the control room. It was deserted now; Ponter’s original arrival had destroyed the observatory’s heavy-water detector tank, and the plans to repair it had been put on hold by the subsequent re-establishment of the portal.

They came to the room above the detector chamber, went through the trapdoor, and-this was the terrifying part for Mary-backed down the long ladder to the staging area, six meters off the ground. The staging area was at the end of the Derkers tube, a crush-proof tunnel that had been shoved through the portal from the other side.

Mary stood at the threshold of the Derkers tube and looked into it. The tube was twice as long on the inside as it was on the outside, and at the other end she could see the yellow walls of the quantum-computing chamber over on Ponter’s version of Earth.

A Canadian Forces guard was there, and they presented their passports to him-Ponter had received one when he’d been made a Canadian citizen.