Humans by Robert J. Sawyer
Mary closed her eyes and waited for the procedure to finish. She didn’t feel a thing; whatever the lasers were doing to her innards was completely painless.
At last, it was over. Mary stepped through to the other side of the chamber, and Ponter led her to another room where they could dress. He indicated a wall full of cubic cubbyholes, each containing clothes. “Try the upper-right,” said Ponter. “They are arranged in ascending order of size; that one should be the smallest.”
The smallest,thought Mary, and she cheered up a little. In this world, it seemed she’d get to shop in the petite section.
Mary got dressed as quickly as she could, and Ponter led her to the elevator station. Once again, Mary was taken aback by the immediately obvious differences between Gliksin and Barast technology. The elevator cab was circular, with a couple of pedals on the floor to operate it. Ponter stomped on one of them, and the car started going up. How handy that would be when one’s arms were full! Mary had once accidentally dumped all her groceries, including a carton of eggs, onto the floor of the elevator at her condo.
There were four vertical rods equally spaced around the interior. At first Mary thought they were structural columns, but they weren’t. Shortly after they’d started the long ride up-presumably two kilometers, just like on her Earth-Ponter started shimmying his back against one of the poles. It was a back-scratching device, and seemed a good way to make use of the time.
Mary wondered aloud about the idea of a circular cab, though. Wouldn’t it tend to rotate within its shaft?
Ponter nodded his massive head. “That is the idea,” Hak said, translating for him. “The lifting mechanism is in the shaft walls, rather than overhead as in your elevators. The channels that guide the elevator are not perfectly vertical. Rather, they spiral around very gently. In this particular shaft, the elevator starts off facing east at the bottom, but will be facing west by the time we reach the top.”
During the trip up, Mary also had a chance to notice the lighting being used. “My God,” she said, looking up, “is that luciferin?”
A glass tube ran around the upper edge of the cylinder, filled with a liquid that was glowing with greenish blue light.
Hak bleeped.
“Luciferin,” repeated Mary. “It’s the substance that fireflies use to make their tails glow.”
“Ah,” said Ponter. “Yes, this is a similar catalytic reaction. It is our principal source of indoor illumination.”
Mary nodded to herself. Of course the Neanderthals, adapted for a cold environment, wouldn’t like incandescent bulbs that give off more heat than light. The luciferin/luciferase reaction was almost completely efficient, producing light with hardly any heat.
The elevator continued its ascent, the blue-green illumination making Ponter’s pale skin look oddly silverish and his golden brown irises seem almost yellow. There were ventilation holes in the roof and floor of the cab, creating a bit of a breeze, and Mary hugged herself against the chill.
“Sorry,” said Ponter, noting her actions.
“That’s okay,” said Mary. “I know you like it cold.”
“It is not that,” said Ponter. “Pheromones build up in a closed space like this, and the ride up is a long one. The vents make sure passengers are not overly influenced by each other’s scents.”
Mary shook her head in wonder. She hadn’t even made it out of the mine yet, and she was already overwhelmed by the differences-and she’d known she was heading to another world! Her heart again went out to Ponter, who had originally arrived on her Earth with no warning, but had somehow managed to keep his sanity.
At last the elevator reached the top, and the door opened. Even that, though, happened in an unfamiliar way, with the door, which had appeared seamless, folding out of the way like an accordion.
They were in a square chamber perhaps five meters on a side. Its walls were lime green, and the ceiling was low. Ponter went over to a shelf and brought back a small flat box that seemed to be made of something like blue cardboard. He opened the box and removed a shiny construct of metal and plastic.
“The High Gray Council realizes it has no choice but to let people from your world visit ours,” Ponter said, “but Adikor said they have imposed one condition. You must wear this.” He held up the object, and Mary could see that it was a metal band, with a face on it very much like Hak’s.
“Companions are normally implants,” said Ponter. “But we understand that subjecting a casual visitor to surgery is too much to ask. However, this band is unremovable, except in this facility; that is, the computer within knows its location and will only allow the clasp to reopen here.”
Mary nodded. “I understand.” She held out her right arm.
“It is usual,” said Ponter, “for the Companion to go on the left arm, unless the bearer is left-handed.”
Mary retracted one arm, and extended the other. Ponter busied himself with attaching the Companion. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about that,” said Mary. “Are most Neanderthals right-handed?”
“About ninety percent are, yes.”
“That’s what we thought from the fossil record.”
Ponter’s eyebrow rolled up. “How could you possibly determine handedness from fossils? I do not believe we have any idea what the distribution of hand preferences was among ancient Gliksins on this world.”
Mary smiled, pleased at the ingenuity of her species. “It came from fossil teeth.”
“What have teeth got to do with handedness?”
“A study was done of eighty teeth from twenty individual Neanderthals. See, we figured with those great jaws of yours, you probably used your teeth as clamps, to hold hides in place while you defleshed them. Well, hides are abrasive, and they grind down the front of the teeth, leaving little nicks. In eighteen of the individuals, the nicks angled toward the right-which is what you’d expect if a scraper was being used on the hide with the right hand, pulling the hide in that direction.”
Ponter made what Mary had learned was the Neanderthal “impressed” face, which consisted of a sucking in of the lips, and a bunching toward the center of the eyebrow. “Excellent reasoning,” said Ponter. “In fact, to this day, we hold flensing parties, where hides are cleaned in that manner; of course, there are other, mechanized techniques, but such parties are a social ritual.”
Ponter paused for a moment, then: “Speaking of hides...” He walked to the opposite side of the room, the wall of which was lined with fur coats, hanging, it appeared, from shoulder clamps attached to a horizontal bar. “Please select one,” he said. “Again, those at the right are the smallest.”
Mary pointed at one, and Ponter did something she didn’t catch that caused one of the coats to be released from the clamps. She wasn’t quite sure how to put it on-it seemed to open at the side, rather than the shoulders, but Ponter helped her into it. There was a part of Mary that thought about objecting; she never wore natural fur back home, but this was, of course, a different place.
It certainly wasn’t a luxurious pelt, like mink or sable; it was coarse, and an uneven reddish brown. “What kind of fur is it?” said Mary, as Ponter did up the clasps that sealed her within the jacket.
“Mammoth,” he said.
Mary’s eyes went wide. It might not be as nice as mink, but a mammoth coat would be worth infinitely more on her world.
Ponter didn’t bother with a jacket for himself. He started walking toward the door. This one was more normal, attached to a single vertical tube that let it swing just as though it were on hinges. Ponter opened it, and-
And there they were, on the surface.
And suddenly all the strangeness evaporated.
Thiswas Earth-the Earth she knew. The sun, low in the western sky, looked exactly as she was used to seeing it. The sky was blue. The trees were pines and birches and other varieties she recognized.
“It’s cold,” she said. Indeed, it felt about four degrees cooler than the Sudbury surface they’d left behind.
Suddenly, a sound caught Mary’s attention, and for one brief moment she thought perhaps a mammoth was bearing down on them to avenge its kin. But no, that wasn’t it. It was an air-cushion vehicle of some sort, cubic in shape but with rounded corners, flying across the rocky ground toward them. The sound Mary had heard seemed to be a combination of fans blowing downward that let it hover a small distance above the surface, and a large fan, like one of those on the boats used in the Everglades, blowing to the rear.
“Ah,” said Ponter, “the travel cube I called for.” Mary assumed he’d done it with Hak’s aid, and without the words translated into English. The strange vehicle settled down in front of them, and Mary could see that it had a Neanderthal driver, a hulking male who looked twenty years older than Ponter.
The cube’s clear side swung open, and the driver spoke to Ponter. Again, the words weren’t translated for Mary’s benefit, but she imagined they were the Neanderthal equivalent of “Where to, Mac?”
Ponter gestured for Mary to precede him into the car. “Now,” he said, “let me show you my world.”
Chapter Thirty
“This is your house?” asked Mary.
Ponter nodded. They had spent a couple of hours touring some public buildings, but it was now well into the evening.
Mary was astonished. Ponter’s home wasn’t made of brick or stone. Rather, it was made mostly of wood. Of course, Mary had seen many wooden houses before-although the building code actually banned them in many parts of Ontario-but she’d never seen one likethis . Ponter’s home seemed to have beengrown . It was as if a very thick, but very short, tree trunk had expanded to fill every part of a giant mold shaped into room-sized cubes and cylinders, and then the mold had been removed, leaving behind the tree, the interior of which had subsequently somehow been partially hollowed out without actually killing it. The house’s surface was still covered with dark brown bark, and the tree itself was apparently still alive, although the leaves on the branches extending up from its central, shaped body had started to change color for the autumn.
Some carpentry had clearly been performed, though. Windows were perfectly square, presumably cut through the wood. Also, a deck extending on one side of the house had been built from planks.
“It’s...” Adjectives were warring for supremacy in Mary’s mind-bizarre, wonderful, odd, fascinating-but the one that won out was, “...beautiful.”
Ponter nodded. One of Mary’s people would have said “thank you” in response to a compliment like that, but Mary had learned that the Neanderthals didn’t routinely acknowledge praise for things they weren’t personally responsible for. Early on, she’d remarked that one of Ponter’s shoulder-closing shirts was quite attractive, and he had looked at her perplexed, as if wondering why anyone would choose to wear something thatwasn’t attractive.
Mary gestured to a large black square on the ground next to the house; it measured perhaps twenty meters on a side. “What’s that? A landing pad?”
“Only incidentally. It is really a solar collector. It converts sunlight into electricity.”
Mary smiled. “I guess you have to shovel snow off it in winter,” she said.
But Ponter shook his head. “No. The hover-bus that takes us to work lands there and uses its jets to blast the snow clear as it does so.”
Her hatred of shoveling snow had been one of the reasons Mary opted for an apartment after she and Colm split up. She rather suspected that in her world, the TTC would balk at sending a bus with a plow on its front around to everyone’s home after each snowfall.
“Come on,” said Ponter, walking toward the house. “Let us go in.”
The door to Ponter’s house swung in. The interior walls were polished wood-the actual substance of the tree around them. Mary had seen hundreds of wood-paneled rooms before, but never one where the grain made one continuous pattern right around the room. If she hadn’t seen the house first from the outside, she would have been absolutely baffled about how it had been accomplished. Little niches had been carved into the walls at various points, and they contained small sculptures and bric-a-brac.
At first Mary thought the floor was carpeted with green fabric, but she quickly realized it was actually moss. She seemed to be in what corresponded to a living room. There were a couple of freestanding oddly shaped chairs, and there were two couches protruding from the walls. There was no framed art, but the entire roof had been painted in a complex mural, and-
And suddenly Mary’s blood ran cold.
There was a wolf inside the house.
Mary froze, her heart pounding.
The wolf began its charge, rushing toward Ponter.
“Look out!”shouted Mary.
Ponter turned and fell backward onto one of the couches.
The wolf was upon him, its jaws opening wide, and-
And Ponter laughed as the wolf licked his face.
Ponter was repeating a handful of words over and over in his own language, but Hak wasn’t translating them. Still, Ponter’s tone was one of affectionate amusement.
After a moment, he pushed the wolf off him and rose to his feet. The creature turned toward Mary.
“Mare,” said Ponter, “this is my dog, Pabo.”
“Dog!” exclaimed Mary. The animal was completely lupine, as far as she could tell: savage, ravenous, predatory.
Pabo crouched down next to Ponter, and, lifting her muzzle high, let out a long, loud howl.
“Pabo!” Ponter said, his tone remonstrative. And his next word must have been the Neanderthal for “Behave!” He smiled apologetically at Mary. “She has never seen a Gliksin before.”
Ponter led Pabo over to Mary. Mary felt her back go stiff, and she tried not to tremble, as the toothy animal, which must have weighed at least a hundred pounds, sniffed her up and down.
Ponter spoke to the dog for a few moments, his words untranslated, in the same lilting tone people from Mary’s world used when talking to their pets.
At that moment, Adikor entered through an archway, coming from another room. “Hello, Mare,” he said. “Did you enjoy your tour?”
“Very much so.”
Ponter moved over to Adikor and drew him into a hug. Mary looked away for a moment, but, when she looked back, they were standing side by side, holding hands.
Mary again felt pangs of jealousy, but-
No, no. Surely that was unseemly. Surely Ponter and Adikor were just behaving as they always did, plain in their affection for each other.
And yet-
And yet, had it been Adikor who had initiated the hug? Or Ponter? She honestly couldn’t tell. And the clasping of hands had occurred while she wasn’t looking; she couldn’t say who had reached out for whom. Maybe Adikor was staking out his territory, making a show for Mary’s sake of his relationship with Ponter.
Pabo, apparently now satisfied that Mary wasn’t some sort of monster, padded away and jumped up on one of the couches growing-quite literally-out of the wall.
“Would you like to see the rest of the house?” asked Ponter.
“Sure,” said Mary.
She was led into an area-not really a separate room-that must have been the kitchen. A sheet of glass covered the mossy floor. Mary didn’t recognize any of the appliances, but she assumed the small cube might be something akin to a microwave oven, and the large unit, consisting of two identical blue cubes, one atop the other, might be a refrigerator of some sort. She gave voice to these guesses, and Adikor laughed.
“Actually, that is a laser cooker,” he said, pointing at the small unit. “It uses the same rotating of frequencies we employ in the sterilizer you went through, but this time so it can cook the meat evenly inside and out. And we do not use refrigeration to store food much anymore, although we used to. That is a vacuum box.”
“Ah,” said Mary. She turned, and was taken aback. One wall was filled with four perfectly square, flat monitor screens, each showing a completely d
“That’s the Voyeur,” said Adikor, coming over to join them. “It’s how we monitor the Exhibitionists. He stepped over to the quartet of monitors and made an adjustment. Suddenly the four separate squares merged into one large one, with a magnified view of the Exhibitionist who had been in the lower-right. “That one is my favorite,” said Adikor. “Hawst is always up to something interesting.” He took in the view for a second. “Ah, he is at adaybatol game.”
“Comeon, “ said Ponter, motioning for them both to follow. His tone suggested that once Adikor started watching adaybatol match, it was hard to get him away from the Voyeur.
Mary followed him, as did Adikor. The next room was clearly their bedroom/bathroom. It had a large window looking out over a brook, and a recessed square pit filled with square cushions, forming a large sleeping surface. On top were a few disk-shaped pillows. At the side of the room was a circular pit, again recessed into the ground. “Is that the bath?” asked Mary.
Ponter nodded. “You are welcome to use it, if you wish.”
Mary shook her head. “Maybe later.” Her gaze fell back on the bed, pictures of a naked Ponter and Adikor entwined in sexual acts forming in her mind.
“And that is it,” said Ponter. “That is our home.”
“Come,” said Adikor. “Let us go back into the living room.”
They did so, Ponter leading the way. Adikor shooed Pabo off one of the couches and lay down on his back upon it. Ponter indicated that Mary could take the other couch. Perhaps being recumbent was the normal leisure posture for Neanderthals; certainly it would be the best way to look at ceiling murals.
Mary did indeed take the other couch, thinking that Ponter would sit next to her. But instead he moved over to where Adikor was lying down and gave him an affectionate rap on the top of his head. Adikor sat up for a moment. Mary expected him to swing his feet around, sitting properly on the couch, but as soon as Ponter had sat down at the end of the couch, Adikor lowered himself, placing his head in Ponter’s lap.