“It is,” replied Ponter firmly. “And the Companion can issue the signal automatically, if you yourself are unable to. It monitors vital signs, and if you have a heart attack—or even are about to have a heart attack—it can summon aid.”
Mary felt a twinge. Her own father had died of a heart attack, alone, when Mary had been eighteen. She’d found his body upon arriving home from school one day.
Ponter evidently mistook the sadness on Mary’s face for continuing dubiousness. “And just a month before I came here, I misplaced a rain shield that I was very fond of; it had been a gift from Jasmel. I would have been”—bleep; devastated?—“had it been lost for good. But I simply visited the archive pavilion where my recordings are stored, and reviewed the last day’s events. I saw exactly where I lost the shield and was able to retrieve it.”
Mary certainly resented the countless hours she’d spent looking for misplaced books and student papers and business cards and house keys and coupons that were about to expire. Maybe you’d resent that even more if you were sure your existence was finite; maybe that knowledge would drive you to do something to avoid such wastes of time. “A personal black box,” Mary said, really to herself, but Ponter responded.
“Actually, the recording material is mostly pink. We use reprocessed granite.”
Mary smiled. “No, no. A black box is what we call a flight recorder: a device aboard an airplane that keeps track of telemetry and cockpit chatter, in case there’s a crash. But the idea of having my own black box had never occurred to me.” She paused. “How are the pictures taken, then?” Mary glanced down at Ponter’s wrist. “Is there a lens on your Companion?”
“Yes, but it is only used to zoom in on things outside the Companion’s normal recording space. The Companion uses sensor fields to record everything surrounding the person, and the person himself, as well.” Ponter made the deep sound that was his chuckle. “After all, it would not be much good if we only recorded what was visible from the Companion’s lens: lots of images of my left thigh or the inside of my hip pouch. This way, when playing back my archive, I can actually view myself from a short distance away.”
“Amazing,” said Mary. “We have nothing like that.”
“But I have seen products of your science, your industry,” said Ponter. “Surely, if you had made it a priority to develop such technology …”
Mary frowned. “Well, I suppose. I mean, we went from putting the first object in space to the first man on the moon in less than twelve years, and—”
“Say that again.”
“I said, when we wanted badly enough to put somebody on the moon—”
“The moon,” repeated Ponter. “You mean Earth’s moon?”
Mary blinked. “Uh-huh.”
“But … but … that is fantastic,” Ponter said. “We have never done such a thing.”
“You’ve never been to the moon? I don’t mean you personally; I mean your people. No Neanderthal has ever been to the moon?”
Ponter’s eyes were wide. “No.”
“What about Mars or the other planets?”
“No.”
“Do you have satellites?”
“No, just one, like here.”
“No, I mean artificial satellites. Unmanned mechanisms you put into orbit, you know, to help in predicting the weather, for communications, and so on.”
“No,” said Ponter. “We have nothing like that.”
Mary thought for a moment. Without the legacy of the V-2, without the missiles of the Second World War, would humans here have been able to send anything into orbit? “We’ve launched—well, I don’t know—many hundreds of things into space.”
Ponter looked up, as if trying to visualize Luna’s scowling face through the ceiling of Reuben’s house. “How many live on the moon now?”
“None,” said Mary, surprised.
“You do not have a permanent settlement there?”
“No.”
“So people simply go to see the moon, then return to Earth. How many go each month? Is it a popular thing to do?”
“Umm, nobody goes. Nobody has gone for—well, I guess it’s thirty years now. We only ever sent twelve people to the moon’s surface. Six groups of two.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Well, it’s complicated. Money was certainly one factor.”
“I can imagine,” said Ponter.
“And, well, there was the political situation. See, we—” She paused for a moment. “Gee, this is hard to explain. We called it The Cold War. There was no actual fighting going on, but the United States and another large nation, the Soviet Union, were in a severe ideological conflict.”
“Over what?”
“Umm, over economic systems, I suppose.”
“Hardly sounds worth fighting about,” said Ponter.
“It seemed very important at the time. But, anyway, the president of the United States, he set the goal in—when was it?—in 1961, I guess, to put a man on the moon by the end of that decade. See, the Russians—the people from the Soviet Union—they’d put the first artificial satellite in space, and then the first man in space, and the U.S. was lagging behind, so, well, it set out to beat them.”
“And did it?”
“Oh, yes. The Russians never managed to put anyone on the moon. But, well, once we’d beaten the Russians, the public pretty much lost interest.”
“That is ridiculous—” began Ponter, but then he stopped. “No, I must apologize. Going to the moon is a magnificent feat, and whether you did it once or a thousand times, it is still praiseworthy.” He paused. “I guess it is simply a question of different priorities.”
Chapter 35
Mary and Ponter headed downstairs, looking for something to eat. Just after they got to the kitchen, Reuben Montego and Louise Benoit finally emerged from the basement. Reuben grinned at Ponter. “More barbecue?”
Ponter smiled back at him. “Please. But you must let me help.”
“I’ll show you how,” said Louise. She patted Ponter on the forearm. “Come on, big fella.”
Suddenly, Mary found herself objecting. “I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“I am,” said Louise. “For five years now. But I know how to barbecue.”
Mary had an urge to go with them, as Ponter and Louise headed out through the sliding glass doors onto the deck. But … but … no, that was silly.
Louise slid the glass doors shut behind them, keeping the cooled air inside the house.
Reuben was clearing off the kitchen table. He faked the voice of an old Jewish yenta. “So, vhat have you two kids been talking about?”
Mary was still looking out through the glass, at Louise, laughing and tossing her hair as she explained how the barbecue worked, and at Ponter, hanging on her every word.
“Umm, mostly religion,” said Mary.
Reuben’s voice immediately switched back to normal. “Really?”
“Uh-huh,” said Mary. She tore her eyes away from what was going on outside, and looked at Reuben. “Or more precisely, Neanderthals’ lack of religion.”
“But I thought Neanderthals did have religion,” said Reuben, now getting some plain white Corelle plates from a cupboard. “The cult of the cave bear, and all that.”
Mary shook her head. “You’ve been reading old books, Reuben. No one takes that seriously anymore.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Oh, some cave-bear skulls were found in one cave that had indeed been occupied by Neanderthals. But it now looks like the bears had simply died in the cave, probably during hibernation, and the Neanderthals had moved in afterwards.”
“But weren’t the skulls all arranged in patterns?”
“Well,” said Mary, getting a handful of cutlery and laying it out, “the guy who first found them claimed they were in a stone crib or coffin. But no photos were taken, workers supposedly destroyed the coffin, and the only two sketches made by the archeologist—a guy named Bachler—completely contradict each other. No, it seems Bachler simply saw what he wanted to see.”