Ponter sat on the couch in Reuben’s office. Everyone else had gone to bed—although Reuben and Louise, next door, clearly weren’t sleeping.
Ponter was sad. The sounds and smells they were making reminded him of himself and Klast, of Two becoming One, of everything he’d lost before coming to this Earth, and all the rest of it he’d lost since.
He’d had the TV on, watching a channel devoted to this thing called religion. There seemed to be many variations, but all of them proposed a God–that outlandish notion again—and a universe that was of a finite, and often ridiculously young, age, plus some sort of after-death existence for the … there was no Neanderthal word for it, but “soul” had been the term Mare had used. It turned out the symbol Mare wore around her neck was a sign of the particular religion she subscribed to, and the fabric that had been wrapped around Dr. Singh’s head was a sign of his somewhat different religion.
Ponter had turned the sound on the TV way down—it had been simple enough to find the appropriate control, although he doubted anything he might do would disturb the couple in the adjacent room.
“How are you feeling?” asked Klast’s voice, and Ponter felt his heart leaping.
Klast!
Darling Klast, contacting him from …
From an afterlife!
But no.
No, of course it wasn’t.
It was just Hak talking to him. Ponter was presumably stuck now with Hak speaking forevermore with Klast’s voice, if he wanted anything other than that droning default male persona the device had come preprogrammed with; certainly there was no way to access the equipment needed to reprogram the implant.
Ponter let out a long sigh, then answered Hak’s question. “I’m sad.”
“But are you adjusting? You were quite shaky when we first got here.”
Ponter shrugged a bit. “I don’t know. I’m still confused and disoriented, but …”
Ponter could almost imagine Hak nodding sympathetically somewhere. “It will take time,” said the Companion, still in Klast’s voice.
“I know,” said Ponter. “I know. But I have to get used to it, don’t I? It looks like I—like we–are going to spend the rest of our lives here, doesn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Hak gently.
Ponter was quiet for a while, and Hak let him be so. Finally, Ponter said, “I guess I’d better face facts. I better start planning for a life here.”
Chapter 40
Keyword(s): Neanderthal
Opposition MP Marissa Crothers charged today in the House of Commons that the clearly fake Neanderthal was a flimsy attempt by the governing Liberal party to cover up the abject failure of the 73-million-dollar Sudbury Neutrino Observatory project …
“Stop hogging the caveman!” That was the sentiment on a placard worn by one American protester during a large demonstration outside the Canadian embassy in Washington today. “Share Ponter with the World!” said another …
Invitations sent to Ponter Boddit for all-expense-paid visits received c/o the Sudbury Star. Disneyland; the Anchor Bar and Grill, home of the original chicken wing, in Buffalo, New York; Buckingham Palace; the Kennedy Space Center; Science North; the UFO museum in Roswell, New Mexico; Toronto’s Zanzibar Tavern strip club; Microsoft headquarters; next year’s World Science Fiction Convention; The Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, Germany; Yankee Stadium. Also submitted: offers of meetings with the French and Mexican presidents; the Japanese prime minister and royal family; the Pope; the Dalai Lama; Nelson Mandela; Stephen Hawking, and Anna Nicole Smith.
Question: How many Neanderthals does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: All of them.
… and so this columnist urges that the Creighton Mine be filled in, to prevent an army of Neanderthals invading our world via the gateway in its bowels. The last time our kind did battle with them, we won. This time, the outcome could be quite different …
Preliminary call for papers: Memetics and the epistemological disjuncture between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens …
A spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, today praised the Canadian government’s rapid response to the arrival of a potential plague vector. “We think they acted properly,” said Dr. Ramona Keitel. “However, we’ve found no pathogens in the specimens they’ve sent us for analysis …”
Everything came off flawlessly. Ponter and Mary left Reuben’s at just after 8:00 A.M., making it through the trees at the back of his property and over the fence without being seen; Ponter’s sense of smell helped them avoid the RCMP officer patrolling the back area on foot.
Louise’s friend was indeed waiting for them. Garth turned out to be a handsome, well-muscled Native Canadian about twenty-five years old. He was extremely polite, calling Mary—to her chagrin—“ma’am,” and Ponter “sir.” He drove them the short distance to the Creighton Mine. The security guards recognized Mary—and Ponter, too, of course—and let them in. There, Mary and Ponter switched into her rented red Neon, which had acquired a patina of dust and bird droppings while sitting in the parking lot.
Mary knew where to head. The night before, she had said to Ponter, “Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to go tomorrow?”
Ponter had nodded. “Home,” he’d said. “Take me home.”
Mary had felt so very sad for him. “Ponter, I would if I could, but there’s no way. You know that; we don’t have the technology.”
“No, no,” Ponter had said. “I don’t mean my home in my world. I mean my home in this world: the place on this version of Earth that corresponds to where my house is.”
Mary had blinked. She’d never even thought of doing that. “Um, yeah. Sure. If you’d like to see it. But how will we find it? I mean, what landmarks will you recognize?”
“If you can show me a detailed map of this area, I can find the spot, and then we can go there.”
Reuben’s password had gotten them into a private Inco website containing geological maps of the entire Sudbury basin. Ponter had no trouble recognizing the contours of the land and finding the spot he wanted, about twenty kilometers from Reuben’s house.
Then Mary drove Ponter as close as she could get to the place he’d indicated. Most of the land surrounding the city of Sudbury was covered with Canadian shield outcrops, forest, and low brush. It took them hours to hike through it all, and, although Mary wasn’t much of an athlete—she played an occasional mediocre game of tennis—she actually enjoyed the exercise, at least for a while, after having been cooped up for so long at Reuben’s place.
Finally, they came over a ridge, and Ponter let out a delighted yelp. “There!” he said. “Right there! That is where my house was—I mean, where my house is.”
Mary looked around, taking in the location: on one side, there were large aspens mixed in with thin birch trees, covered with papery white bark; on the other, a lake. Mallard ducks were floating on the lake, and a black squirrel scampered across the ground. Running into the lake was a babbling brook.
“It’s beautiful,” said Mary.
“Yes,” said Ponter, excitedly. “Of course, the vegetation is completely different on my Earth. I mean, the plants are mostly of the same types, but the specific places where they are growing are not the same. But the rock outcrops are very similar—and that boulder in the brook! How I know that boulder! I have often sat atop it reading.”