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Mary found herself feeling very relaxed; Bandra’s good humor was infectious.

“I hope you don’t mind us stopping by,” said Lurt, “but…”

“But you were in the neighborhood!” said Bandra, grinning broadly at Mary.

Mary nodded.

“Out and about,” continued Bandra—saying it as “oot and aboot,” the exaggerated accent that Americans ascribed to Canadians but that Mary had yet to actually hear from any of her compatriots. “Such wonderful turns of phrase you Gliksins have.”

“Thank you.”

“So,” said Bandra, “Lurt said you had a favor to ask.” She gestured at the rocks spread out around the room. “I can’t imagine what help a geologist might be to you, but—and this one is one of my favorites—‘I am all ears.’ ” Bandra beamed at Mary.

“Well, um, I…um, I’m looking for a place to stay, here in Saldak Center.”

“Really?” said Bandra.

Mary smiled. “If I’m lying, I’m dying.”

Bandra roared with laughter. “I hope you’re doing neither!” She paused. “I do have a big old house, and I am all alone in it now.”

“So Lurt said. I will only be here for a month or so, but if you’d like to have a housemate…”

“I would, but…” Bandra trailed off.

Mary wanted to say, “But what?” But she had no right to pry; it was hardly incumbent on Bandra to justify turning Mary down.

Still, after a moment, Bandra went on. “Only a month, you say? So, you would be here only during the next Two becoming One?”

“Yes,” said Mary, “but I’ll stay out of your way then, of course.”

Mary could see emotions warring across Bandra’s wide face—and she certainly could understand that. The Neanderthal woman was doubtless weighing the inconvenience of having a stranger move in against her scientific fascination at getting to spend time with a being from another world.

“Very well,” said Bandra, at last. “What is your phrase? ‘Your home is my home.’ ”

“I think it’s the other way around,” said Mary.

“Ah, yes, yes! I’m still learning!”

Mary smiled. “So am I.”

Chapter Sixteen

“But it has been three decades since Eugene Cernan became the last person to walk on the moon. The last person! Who would have thought that whole generations would be born after 1972 for whom the notion of humans on other worlds would be nothing but a lesson in history class…?”

Mary found Bandra’s home much more comfortable than Lurt’s, even though it wasn’t any bigger. For one thing, the furniture was more to Mary’s taste. And for another, it turned out that Bandra was both a bird-watcher and a wonderful artist: she had covered the wooden interior walls and ceilings with Audubon-quality paintings of local birds, including, of course, passenger pigeons. Mary loved birds herself: that had been why she’d been working on passenger-pigeon DNA back at York while her grad student, Daria, had had the seemingly more sexy assignment of recovering genetic material from an Egyptian mummy.

Mary found it strange to come home before Bandra did—and even stranger just to walk in the front door. But, of course, Neanderthals didn’t lock their homes; they didn’t have to.

Bandra had a household robot—many Barasts did. It was a spindly, insectlike being. It regarded Mary with blue mechanical eyes—not unlike those Lonwis had—but went puttering along, cleaning and dusting.

Although Mary knew she couldn’t see Ponter until Two next became One, there was no reason she couldn’t call him—her shiny new Companion could connect to his Companion, or any other, without difficulty.

And so Mary made herself comfortable—lying down on the couch in Bandra’s living room, staring up at the beautiful mural on the ceiling—and had Christine call up Hak.

“Hi, sweetie,” she said—which was even worse than “honey” as far as being an endearment that couldn’t be reproduced by Ponter, but all he would have heard was the translation Christine provided.

“Mare!” Ponter’s voice was full of excitement. “How good to hear from you!”

“I miss you,” Mary said. She felt like she was eighteen again, talking to her boyfriend Donny from her bedroom at her parents’ house.

“I miss you, too.”

“Where are you?”

“I am taking Pabo for a walk. We can both use the exercise.”

“Is Adikor with you?”

“No, he’s at home. So, what’s new?”

It was astonishing after all this time to hear Ponter using contractions—which led to Mary starting by telling him all about the installation of her permanent Companion. She went on to talk about moving into Bandra’s house, and then: “Lurt said something very intriguing. She said there’s a banned device that could help us have a child.”

“Really?” said Ponter. “What is it?”

“She said it was the invention of someone named Vissan Lennet.”

“Oh!” said Ponter. “I recall her now; I saw it on my Voyeur. She removed her Companion, and went to live in the wilderness. Some sort of conflict with the High Grays over an invention.”

“Exactly!” said Mary. “She’d invented a device called a codon writer that could produce any DNA strings one might want—which is exactly what we need in order to have a baby. Lurt thinks Vissan probably still has her prototype.”

“Perhaps so,” said Ponter. “But if she does—excuse me. Good dog! Good dog! Here, there you go! Fetch! Fetch! Sorry, I was saying, if it does exist, it’s still banned.”

“That’s right,” said Mary. “In this world. But if we took it back to my world…”

“That’s brilliant!” said Ponter. “But how do we get it?”

“I figure we find Vissan and simply ask her for it. What have we got to lose?”

“And how do we find her? She doesn’t have a Companion.”

“Well, Lurt said she used to live in a town called Kraldak. Do you know where that is?”

“Sure. It’s just north of Lake Duranlan —Lake Erie. Kraldak is about where Detroit is in your world.”

“Well, if she’s living in the wilderness, she can’t have gone too far from there, can she?”

“I suppose. She certainly couldn’t use any form of transit without a Companion.”

“And Lurt said she’s probably built a cabin.”

“That makes sense.”

“So we could search satellite photos for a new cabin—one that isn’t on maps that are more than four months old.”

“You’re forgetting where you are, my love,” said Ponter. “Barasts have no satellites.”

“Right. Damn. What about aerial reconnaissance? You know—pictures taken from airplanes?”

“No airplanes, either—although we’ve got helicopters.”

“Well, would there be any helicopter surveys done since she left?”

“How long ago was that again?”

“Lurt said about four months.”

“Well, then, yes, sure. Forest fires are a problem in summer, of course—both those caused by lightning and by human error. Aerial photographs are taken to track them.”

“Can we access them?”

“Hak?”

Hak’s voice came into Mary’s head. “I am accessing them, even as we speak,” the Companion said. “According to the alibi archives, Vissan Lennet’s Companion went off-line on 148/101/17, and there have been three aerial surveys of Kraldak and environs since then. But although a cabin might be easily visible in winter, when the deciduous trees have lost their leaves, spotting such a thing through the summertime canopy will be difficult.”