“But you’ll try?” asked Mary.
“Of course.”
“It’s probably pointless, though,” said Mary with a sigh. “Surely others have tried to track her down, if what Lurt said about Vissan’s codon writer is true.”
“Why?”
“Well, you know: sterilized individuals, looking to circumvent the sanction that had been imposed on them.”
“Perhaps,” replied Ponter, “but it’s not been that long since Vissan chose to leave society, and there are not that many sterilized people. And, after all, no one on this world is looking to conceive prior to next summer, so—”
“Excuse me,” said Hak. “I have found it.”
“What?” said Mary.
“The cabin—or, at least, a cabin that is not on any of the older maps. It is approximately thirty-five kilometers due west of Kraldak.” Hak translated the Neanderthal units for Mary, although Ponter had probably heard something like “70,000 armspans” through his cochlear implants.
“Wonderful!” exclaimed Mary. “Ponter, we have to go see her!”
“Certainly,” he said.
“Can you go tomorrow?”
Ponter’s voice was heavy. “Mare…”
“What? Oh, I know. I know, Two are not One but…”
“Yes?”
Mary sighed. “No, you’re right. Well, then, can we go when Two are next One?”
“Of course, my love. We can do whatever you want then.”
“All right,” said Mary. “It’s a date.”
Bandra and Mary seemed very simpatico—a word Bandra relished using. They both liked to spend quiet evenings at home, and although they had an endless array of scientific things to discuss, they also touched on more personal matters.
It reminded Mary of her first days with Ponter, quarantined at Reuben Montego’s house. Sharing opinions and ideas with Bandra was intellectually and emotionally stimulating, and the female Neanderthal had a wonderfully warm way about her, kind and funny.
Still, as they sat in the living room of Bandra’s house, the topics sometimes got, if not heated, at least quite pointed.
“You know,” said Bandra, sitting at the opposite end of a couch from Mary, “this excessive desire for privacy must be fueled by your religions. At first I thought it was just because certain appealing behaviors were forbidden, and so people required privacy to indulge in them. And, doubtless, that’s part of it. But, now that you’ve told me about your multiplicity of belief systems, it seems that even just wanting to practice a minority belief required privacy. Early practitioners of your system, Christianity, hid their meetings from others, isn’t that so?”
“That’s true,” said Mary. “In fact, our most important holy day is Christmas, commemorating the annual anniversary of Jesus’ birth. We celebrate it on December 25—in winter—but Jesus was born in the spring. We know that because the Bible says it happened when the shepherds watched over their flocks by night, which only happens in the spring, when new lambs are born.” Mary smiled. “Hey, you guys are like that: you like to give birth in the spring, too.”
“Probably for the same reason: to give the offspring the best chance to grow before having to face winter.”
But the simile had stuck in Mary’s mind, and she ventured forward tentatively. “You Barasts are like sheep in other ways, too. You’re so peaceful.”
“Does it seem that way?” said Bandra.
“You don’t have wars. And from what I’ve seen, you don’t have much societal violence. Although…” She stopped herself, before she mentioned the shattering of Ponter’s jaw, an unfortunate event from years ago.
“I suppose. We still hunt our own food—not all the time, of course, unless that happens to be one’s particular contribution. But often enough that it provides an outlet for violent impulses. How do you say it? It gets it out of our systems.”
“Catharsis,” said Mary. “A purging of pent-up feeling.”
“Catharsis! Oooh, another great word! Yes, indeed: smash in a few animal skulls, or tear flesh from bone, and you feel wonderfully peaceful afterward.”
Mary stopped to think if she’d ever killed an animal, for food or any other purpose. Except for swatting mosquitoes, the answer was no. “We don’t do that.”
“I know,” said Bandra. “You consider it uncivilized. But we consider it to be part of what makes civilization possible.”
“Still, your lack of privacy—doesn’t it give rise to abuses? Couldn’t someone be clandestinely—secretly—watching what you’re doing, by compromising the security of the alibi archives?”
“Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Well, to prevent an overthrow of the government, say.”
“Why would someone want to overthrow the government? Why not just vote it out of office?”
“Well, today, yes. But surely you haven’t had democracy since the dawn of time?”
“What else might we have had?”
“Tribal chieftains? Warlords? God-emperors? No, scratch that last one. But, well…” Mary frowned. Well, what? Without agriculture, there were no small-scale defensible territories. Oh, primitive farmers could doubtless defend a few hundred acres, but the tens or hundreds of square miles that represented a hunting forest were beyond the abilities of small groups to protect.
And, indeed, why bother defending them? A raid on farmlands produced immediate results: plant food and fiber, stolen from the field or taken from the granary. But, as Ponter had pointed out time and again, hunting and gathering were based on knowledge: no one could just enter a new territory and profitably exploit it. They wouldn’t know where the animals came to drink, where the birds laid their eggs, where the most bountiful fruit trees grew. No, such a lifestyle would engender peaceful trade, since it was far less work for a traveler to bring something of value along to swap for freshly captured game rather than to try to hunt the game himself.
Nonetheless, if push came to shove, most Neanderthals were probably robust enough to forage for themselves—just as apparently this Vissan was now doing. Besides, with a cap on population size—and the Neanderthals had had that for hundreds of years—there was plenty of unused territory for anyone who wished to strike out on their own.
“Still,” said Mary, “there must have been times when people didn’t like their elected officials, and wanted to get rid of them.”
“Oh, yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.”
“What happened then?”
“In the old days? Before the purging of our gene pool? Assassination.”
“Well, there!” said Mary. “That’s a reason for compromising other people’s privacy: to thwart assassination attempts. If someone was plotting to assassinate you, you’d want to keep an eye on them, to prevent them from pulling it off.”
“An assassination doesn’t require any plotting,” said Bandra, her eyebrow lifted. “You just walk up to the person you want to be rid of and smash their skull in. Believe me, that provides a wonderful incentive for elected officials to keep their constituents happy.”
Mary laughed in spite of herself. “Still, surely even if the majority are happy, there will always be discontented individuals.”
Bandra nodded. “Which is why we long ago saw the necessity of purging the gene pool of those who might act in an antisocial manner.”
“But this purging of the gene pool…” Mary was trying not to be judgmental, but her tone betrayed her. “I’ve tried to talk to Ponter about this, but it’s difficult; he’s so blindly in favor of it. But even more than your lack of privacy, that notion is what creeps my people out the most.”
“‘Creeps them out’! Oooh, that’s a classic!”