“And that would be?”
“Siblings. Parents.”
“Yes. And?”
“And—well, and identical twins. That’s why we say at least fifty percent; identical twins have one hundred percent of their DNA in common.”
“Yes, yes, but you’re forgetting another group.”
“Brothers. Sisters. The criminal’s mother. The criminal’s father.”
“And…”
“I don’t know what you’re…” Ponter fell silent. “Oh,” he said, softly. He looked at Selgan again, then dropped his gaze. “Offspring. Children.”
“And you have children, don’t you?”
“My two daughters, Jasmel Ket and Mega Bek.”
“And so if anyone were to learn of your crime, and somehow they let it slip out, or the court ordered access to their alibi archives, not just you would be punished. Your daughters would be sterilized, too.”
Ponter closed his eyes.
“Isn’t that right?” said Selgan.
Ponter’s voice was very soft. “Yes.”
“I asked you earlier if you’d sterilized anyone else in the other world, and you yelled at me.”
Ponter said nothing.
“Do you know why you yelled?”
A long, shuddering sigh escaped from Ponter’s mouth. “I only sterilized the actual perpetrator, not his relatives. You know, I’d never given much thought to the…the righteousness of sterilizing innocents just to improve the gene pool. But…but Hak and I have been working through this Gliksin Bible. In the very first story, all the off spring of the original two humans were cursed because those original humans committed a crime. And that seemed so wrong, so unfair.”
“And as much as you wanted the Gliksin gene pool to be purged of Ruskin’s evil, you couldn’t bring yourself to track down his close relatives,” said Selgan. “For if you did, you’d be admitting that your close relatives—your two daughters—deserved to be punished for the crime you had committed.”
“They are innocent,” said Ponter. “No matter how wrong what I did was, they do not deserve to suffer for it.”
“And yet they will if you come forward and admit your crime.”
Ponter nodded.
“And so what do you intend to do?”
Ponter lifted his massive shoulders. “Carry this secret with me until I die.”
“And then?”
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“After you are dead, then what?”
“Then…then nothing.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Of course. I mean, yes, I have been studying this Bible, and I know Mare is sane and intelligent and not delusional, but…”
“You have no doubt that she is wrong? No doubt that there is nothing after death?”
“Well….”
“Yes?”
“No. Forget it.”
Selgan frowned, deciding it wasn’t yet quite time to press this point. “Have you wondered about why Mare is attracted to you?”
Ponter looked away.
“I heard what you said earlier about them also being humans. But, still, you are less like her than any other human she had ever met to that point.”
“Physically, perhaps,” said Ponter. “But mentally, emotionally, we have much in common.”
“Still,” said Selgan, “since Mare had been hurt by a male of her own species, she might—”
“Don’t you think that’s already occurred to me?” snapped Ponter.
“Speak it aloud, Ponter. Get it out in the open.”
Ponter snorted. “She might be attracted to me because in her eyes I am not human—not one of those who hurt her.”
Selgan was quiet for a few beats. “It’s a thought worth reflecting on.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Ponter. “It doesn’t matter one bit. I love her. And she loves me. Nothing besides those two facts is important.”
“Very well,” said Selgan. “Very well.” He paused again, and let his tone sound absent, as if an odd thought had just occurred to him, rather than that he’d been waiting for the right moment to present this. “And, say, have you given any thought as to why you are attracted to her?”
Ponter rolled his eyes. “Personality sculptors!” he said. “You’re about to tell me that she reminds me of Klast in some way. But you couldn’t be more wrong. She doesn’t look anything like Klast. Her personality is completely different. Mare and Klast have nothing in common.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Selgan, gesturing with his hand as if to dismiss the notion. “I mean, how could they? They aren’t even members of the same species…”
“That’s right,” said Ponter, folding his arms across his chest.
“And they come from completely different belief systems.”
“Exactly.”
Selgan shook his head. “Such a bizarre notion, isn’t it? This idea of a life after death…”
Ponter said nothing.
“Do you ever contemplate it? Ever wonder if, just maybe…” Selgan trailed off and waited patiently for Ponter to fill the void.
“Well,” said Ponter at last, “it is an appealing concept. Ever since Mare first told me of it, I’ve been thinking about it.” Ponter raised his hands. “I mean, sure, sure, I know that there is no afterlife—at least not for me. But…”
“But she lives in an alternative physical plane,” supplied Selgan. “Another universe. A universe where things might be different.”
Ponter’s head moved vertically in the slightest of nods.
“And she isn’t even Barast, is she? She belongs to another species. Just because we don’t have these—what do they call them? These immortal souls? Just because we don’t have immortal souls, doesn’t mean that they don’t, does it?”
“Do you have a point?” snapped Ponter.
“Always,” said Selgan. “You lost your own woman-mate twenty-odd months ago.” He paused, and made his voice as soft as he could. “Mare is not the only one recovering from a trauma.”
Ponter lifted his eyebrow. “Granted. But I hardly see how Klast’s death would propel me into the arms of a woman from another world.”
There was silence for an extended time. Finally, Hak, who had been quiet all through the therapy to this point, addressed Selgan through his external speaker. “Do you want me to tell him?”
“I’ll do it,” said Selgan. “Ponter, please take this gently, but…well, you have told me of Gliksin beliefs.”
“What about them?” said Ponter, an edge still in his voice.
“They believe the dead are not really dead. They believe that the consciousness of the individual lives on after the body.”
“So?”
“So maybe you’re looking to insulate yourself from the same kind of pain that you suffered when Klast died. If your woman-mate believed in this…this immortality of the mind, or if you thought, however irrationally, that she might actually have such immortality, then…” Selgan trailed off, inviting Ponter to finish the thought for him.