Robert Sawyer - Hybrids

“You told me you wouldn’t hurt him,” said Mary. A seagull wheeled overhead.

“I told you I would not kill him,” said Ponter. “And I did not, but…” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “My honest intention had been simply to warn him that I had identified him as the rapist, so that he would never commit that crime again. But when I saw him, when I smelled him, smelled the stench of him, the stench he’d left on his latest victim’s clothing, I could not help myself…”

“Jesus, Ponter. You know what this means: he’s got the upper hand. Anytime he wants, he could blow the whistle on you. The issue of whether he was guilty of rape wouldn’t even figure in your trial, I suspect.”

“But he is guilty! And I couldn’t stand the thought of him getting away with his crime.” And then, perhaps to defend himself even more, he repeated the last word in the plural-“Crimes,” reminding Mary that she had not been Cornelius Ruskin’s only victim, and that the second rape had happened because Mary had failed to report her own.

“His relatives,” said Mary, the moment the thought came to her. “His brothers, sisters. Parents. My God, you didn’t do anything to them, did you?”

Ponter hung his head, and Mary thought he was going to admit further attacks. But that wasn’t the cause of his shame. “No,” he said. “No, I have done nothing about any other copies of the genes that made him what he was. I wanted to punish him — to hurt him, for hurting you.”

“But now he can hurt you,” said Mary.

“Don’t worry,” said Ponter. “He won’t ever reveal what I did.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“To accuse me would mean that his own crimes would come to light. Perhaps not at my own trial-but in separate proceedings, no? Surely the enforcers here wouldn’t let the matter drop.”

“I suppose,” said Mary, still furious. “But a judge might rule that he’d already been punished enough by you. After all, Canadian law considers castration too great a penalty even for rape. So, if he’d already been punished to that level, a judge might deem it pointless to impose the lesser, legal penalty of imprisonment. If that’s the case, he would have nothing to lose by seeing to it that you were jailed for what you did to him.”

“Regardless, it would become public knowledge that he had been a rapist. Surely there would be social consequences of that which he would not risk.”

“You should have talked to me first!”

“As I said, I had not intended to exact this…this…”

“Revenge,” said Mary, but the word came out in a plain tone, as if she were merely providing another bit of vocabulary. She shook her head slowly back and forth. “You should not have done this.”

“I know.”

“And to do it, but then not tell me! Damn it, Ponter-we’re not supposed to have secrets! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Ponter looked out at the marina, at the cold gray water. “I’m sure I am safe from repercussions in this world,” he said, “for, as I said, Ruskin will never reveal what I did to him. But in my world…”

“What about it?” snapped Mary.

“Don’t you see? If it were to become known in my world what I’d done, I’d be judged excessively violent.”

“You trust bloody Ruskin to keep a secret, but not me!”

“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. But everything is recorded. There would be a record in my alibi archive of me telling you, and there would be a record in yours of the same thing. Even if neither of us ever let the matter slip out, there would always be a chance that the courts might order access to your archives or mine, and then…”

“What? What?”

“And then not only I would be punished, but so would Mega and Jasmel.”

Oh, Christ, thought Mary. It comes full circle.

“I am sorry,” said Ponter. “I really am-about what I did to Ruskin, and about not letting you know.” He sought out her eyes. “Believe me, it has not been an easy burden to bear.”

Suddenly Mary got it. “The personality sculptor!”

“Yes, this is why I saw Jurard Selgan.”

“Not because of my rape…” said Mary slowly.

“No, not directly.”

“…but because of what you’d done about my rape.”

“Exactly.”

Mary let out a long sigh, anger-and much else-exiting her body. He hadn’t thought less of her because she’d been raped…“Ponter,” she said softly. “Ponter, Ponter…”

“I do love you, Mare.”

She shook her head slowly back and forth, wondering what to do next.

“ And that drive will compel us onward and outward…”

Bristol Harbour Village was the dream of a developer named Fred Sarkis: five luxury condominium-apartment buildings perched atop a shale cliff on the shore of Canandaigua Lake. One of upstate New York’s Finger Lakes, Canandaigua was a long, deep gouge in the landscape formed by Ice Age glaciers.

BHV had been built in the early 1970s, before the economies of Rochester, and so many other upstate cities, had gone into the toilet. It was a bizarre artifact of its time, like Habitat from Expo ’67. When Mary first saw it, at Louise Benoit’s recommendation, she’d thought they should film the next Spider-Man movie there: there were all sorts of bridges linking its multilevel outdoor parking garages with the actual apartment buildings that would have been perfect for the web-slinger.

Apparently, though, the development had never quite worked out the way it had been planned, and despite such luxuries as a Robert Trent Jones golf course just up the street and nearby Bristol Mountain for skiing in winter, there were always a large number of units for sale or rent. The real-estate agent Mary had spoken to went on about how Patty Duke and John Astin, back when they were married, had stayed there one summer. Mary rather suspected that once she learned that two Neanderthals were now here, that fact would become a new part of her sales pitch.

The apartment Mary had rented was a two-bedroom, 1000-square-foot unit split over two levels. It still had what must have been the original god-awful orange shag carpet; Mary hadn’t seen anything like it in decades. Still, the view was beautiful-looking directly across the width of the lake. The upper balcony, off the master bedroom, had an unobstructed panorama; the lower balcony looked out into the top of the tenacious trees that had grown up out of the crumbling cliff face. From either of them, one could see the cement walkway jutting out to the outdoor elevator shaft that dropped the hundreds of feet to the marina and man-made beach below.

“Now, this is an interesting place!” said Ponter as he stood on the lower balcony, clutching the railing with both hands. “Modern conveniences amid nature. I almost think I am back on my world.”

Mary was using an electric grill on the balcony to cook steaks she’d bought at Wegman’s. Ponter continued to look out at the lake, while Adikor seemed more interested in a large spider that was working its way along the railing.

When the steaks were done-just a shade past raw for the boys, medium well for her-Mary served them, and Ponter and Adikor tore into theirs with gloved hands, while Mary carved hers with a knife. Of course, dinner was the easy part, thought Mary. At some point, though, someone was bound to bring up the question of “So,” said Adikor, “where shall we sleep?”

Mary took a deep breath, then: “I thought Ponter and I would-”

“No, no, no,” said Adikor. “Two are not One. It’s I who should be sleeping with Ponter now.”

“Yes, but this is my home,” said Mary. “My world.”

“That’s irrelevant. Ponter is my man-mate. You two have not even bonded yet.”