Robert Sawyer - Hybrids

Jock sat up straight in his Aeron chair. “Really? My…goodness. I didn’t…I didn’t think that would be possible.”

“Well, it is!” said Mary, beaming.

“Um, well, ah, congratulations,” said Jock. “And to you, too, of course, Ponter. Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” said Ponter.

Suddenly Jock frowned, as if something important had occurred to him. “A hybrid between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis,” he said. “Will it have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes or twenty-four?”

“You mean, will it be Gliksin or Barast, according to the test I worked out?” asked Mary.

Jock nodded. “Just-you know-an idle curiosity.”

“We talked about that a lot. We finally decided to give it twenty-three pairs of chromosomes. It’ll appear as a Gliksin-a Homo sapiens — at that level.”

“I see,” said Jock. He seemed slightly displeased at the notion.

“Given that the embryo is going to be placed in my womb”-she patted her belly-“we’re trying to avoid triggering any immunological responses there.”

Jock glanced down. “You’re not pregnant now, are you?”

“No, no. Not yet. Generation 149 won’t be conceived until next year.”

Jock blinked. “So the child is going to live in the Neanderthal world? Does that mean you’re going to move there permanently?”

Mary looked over at Ponter and Adikor. She hadn’t expected to get into this just yet. “Actually,” she said slowly, “I’m going to mostly stay in this world…”

“It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming,” said Jock.

Mary nodded. “There is. You know I finished the task you hired me for here at Synergy much faster than we’d originally anticipated. I’m thinking it’s time I moved on. I’ve been offered a full-time tenured position in the genetics department at Laurentian.”

“Laurentian?” said Jock. “Where’s that?”

“It’s in Sudbury-you know, where the portal is. Laurentian is a small university, but it’s got a great genetics department-and it does DNA forensic work for the RCMP.” She paused. “I find myself interested in that area these days.”

Jock smiled. “Who’d have thought ‘location, location, location’ would ever apply to Sudbury?”

“Hello, Mary.”

Mary dropped the mug she was holding. It shattered, and coffee laced with chocolate milk splattered across the floor of her office. “I’ll scream,” said Mary. “I’ll call for Ponter.”

Cornelius Ruskin closed the door behind him. “There’s no need for that.”

Mary’s heart was pounding. She looked around for anything she could use as a weapon. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Cornelius managed a small smile. “I work here. I’m your replacement.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Mary. She scooped up the handset of her desk phone.

Cornelius moved closer.

“Don’t you touch me!” said Mary. “Don’t you dare!”

“Mary-”

“Get out! Get out! Get out!”

“Just give me two minutes, Mary-that’s all I ask.”

“I’ll call the police!”

“You can’t do that. You know you can’t, not after what Ponter did to me, and-”

Suddenly Cornelius stopped talking. Mary’s heart was pounding furiously, and her face must have betrayed something that Cornelius detected.

“You don’t know!” he said, his blue eyes wide. “You don’t know, do you? He never told you!”

“Told me what?” said Mary.

Cornelius’s lean form went limp, as if his limbs were only loosely connected to his body. “It never occurred to me that you weren’t involved in planning it, that you didn’t know…”

“Know what?” demanded Mary.

Cornelius backed away. “I won’t hurt you, Mary. I can’t hurt you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do you know that Ponter came to see me, at my apartment?”

“What? You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not.”

“When?”

“Back in September. Late at night…”

“You are lying. He never-”

“Oh, yes he did.”

“He would have told me,” said Mary.

“So I would have thought,” agreed Cornelius with a philosophical shrug. “But apparently he didn’t.”

“Look,” said Mary. “I don’t care about any of that. Just get the hell out of here. I came down here to get away from you! I’m going to call the police.”

“You don’t want to do that,” said Cornelius.

“Just watch me-and if you come one step closer, I’ll scream.”

“Mary-”

“Don’t come any closer.”

“Mary, Ponter castrated me.”

Mary felt her jaw drop. “You’re lying,” she said. “You’re making that up.”

“I’ll show you, if you like…”

“No!” Mary almost vomited, the notion of seeing his naked flesh again too much to bear.

“It’s true. He came to my apartment, maybe two in the morning, and he-”

“Ponter would never do that. Not without telling me.”

Cornelius moved a hand to his zipper. “Like I said, I can prove it.”

“No!” Mary was gasping for air now.

“Qaiser Remtulla told me you’d gone native-moving permanently to the other side. I never would have come down here otherwise, but…” He shrugged again. “I need this job, Mary,” said Cornelius. “York was a dead end for me-for any white male of my generation. You know that.”

Mary was close to hyperventilating. “I can’t work with you. I can’t even be in the same room as you.”

“I’ll stay out of your way. I promise.” His voice softened. “Damn it, Mary, do you think I like seeing you? It reminds me of”-he paused, and his voice cracked, just a little-“of what I used to be.”

“I hate you,” hissed Mary.

“I know you do.” He shrugged a little. “I–I can’t say that I blame you, either. But if you spill the beans about me to Krieger, or anyone else, it will be game over for Ponter Boddit. He’ll go to jail for what he did to me.”

“God damn you,” said Mary.

Cornelius just nodded. “No doubt he will.”

“Ponter!” said Mary, storming into the room at Synergy where he was working with Adikor Huld and Lonwis Trob. “Come with me!”

“Hello, Mare,” said Ponter. “What’s wrong?”

“Now!” snapped Mary. “Right now!”

Ponter turned to the other two Neanderthals, but Christine continued to translate. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment…”

Lonwis nodded, and made a crack to Adikor that it must be Last Five. Mary marched out of the room, and Ponter followed.

“ Outside! ” snapped Mary, and without looking back, she headed down the mansion’s carpeted main-floor corridor, took her coat from the rack, and went out the front door.

Ponter followed, taking no coat. Mary marched across the brown lawn and crossed the road, until they were at the boardwalk of the deserted marina. She wheeled on Ponter. “Cornelius Ruskin is here,” she said.

“No,” said Ponter. “I would have smelled him if-”

“Maybe slicing off his balls has changed his scent,” snapped Mary.

“Ah,” said Ponter, and then: “Oh.”

“That’s it?” demanded Mary. “That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“I-um, well…”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“You wouldn’t have approved,” said Ponter, looking down at the sidewalk, which was half-blanketed with dead leaves.

“You’re damn right I wouldn’t have! Ponter, how could you do something like that? For Christ’s sake…”

“Christ,” Ponter repeated softly. “Christ taught that forgiveness was the greatest of virtues. But…”

“Yes?” snapped Mary.

“But I am not Christ,” he said, his voice sounding very sad indeed. “I could not forgive.”