“I suppose,” said Mary, still furious. “But a judge might rule that he’d already been punished enough by you. After all, Canadian law considers castration too great a penalty even for rape. So, if he’d already been punished to that level, a judge might deem it pointless to impose the lesser, legal penalty of imprisonment. If that’s the case, he would have nothing to lose by seeing to it that you were jailed for what you did to him.”
“Regardless, it would become public knowledge that he had been a rapist. Surely there would be social consequences of that which he would not risk.”
“You should have talked to me first!”
“As I said, I had not intended to exact this…this…”
“Revenge,” said Mary, but the word came out in a plain tone, as if she were merely providing another bit of vocabulary. She shook her head slowly back and forth. “You should not have done this.”
“I know.”
“And to do it, but then not tell me! Damn it, Ponter—we’re not supposed to have secrets! Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
Ponter looked out at the marina, at the cold gray water. “I’m sure I am safe from repercussions in thisworld,” he said, “for, as I said, Ruskin will never reveal what I did to him. But in my world…”
“What about it?” snapped Mary.
“Don’t you see? If it were to become known in my world what I’d done, I’d be judged excessively violent.”
“You trust bloody Ruskin to keep a secret, but not me!”
“It’s not that. It’s not that at all. But everything is recorded. There would be a record in my alibi archive of me telling you, and there would be a record in yours of the same thing. Even if neither of us ever let the matter slip out, there would always be a chance that the courts might order access to your archives or mine, and then…”
“What? What?”
“And then not only I would be punished, but so would Mega and Jasmel.”
Oh, Christ, thought Mary. It comes full circle.
“I am sorry,” said Ponter. “I really am—about what I did to Ruskin, and about not letting you know.” He sought out her eyes. “Believe me, it has not been an easy burden to bear.”
Suddenly Mary got it. “The personality sculptor!”
“Yes, this is why I saw Jurard Selgan.”
“Not because of my rape…” said Mary slowly.
“No, not directly.”
“…but because of what you’d doneabout my rape.”
“Exactly.”
Mary let out a long sigh, anger—and much else—exiting her body. He hadn’t thought less of her because she’d been raped…“Ponter,” she said softly. “Ponter, Ponter…”
“I do love you, Mare.”
She shook her head slowly back and forth, wondering what to do next.
Chapter Thirty-four
“And that drive will compel us onward and outward…”
Bristol Harbour Village was the dream of a developer named Fred Sarkis: five luxury condominium-apartment buildings perched atop a shale cliff on the shore of Canandaigua Lake. One of upstate New York’s Finger Lakes, Canandaigua was a long, deep gouge in the landscape formed by Ice Age glaciers.
BHV had been built in the early 1970s, before the economies of Rochester, and so many other upstate cities, had gone into the toilet. It was a bizarre artifact of its time, like Habitat from Expo ’67. When Mary first saw it, at Louise Benoît’s recommendation, she’d thought they should film the next Spider-Man movie there: there were all sorts of bridges linking its multilevel outdoor parking garages with the actual apartment buildings that would have been perfect for the web-slinger.
Apparently, though, the development had never quite worked out the way it had been planned, and despite such luxuries as a Robert Trent Jones golf course just up the street and nearby Bristol Mountain for skiing in winter, there were always a large number of units for sale or rent. The real-estate agent Mary had spoken to went on about how Patty Duke and John Astin, back when they were married, had stayed there one summer. Mary rather suspected that once she learned that two Neanderthals were now here, that fact would become a new part of her sales pitch.
The apartment Mary had rented was a two-bedroom, 1000-square-foot unit split over two levels. It still had what must have been the original god-awful orange shag carpet; Mary hadn’t seen anything like it in decades. Still, the view was beautiful—looking directly across the width of the lake. The upper balcony, off the master bedroom, had an unobstructed panorama; the lower balcony looked out into the top of the tenacious trees that had grown up out of the crumbling cliff face. From either of them, one could see the cement walkway jutting out to the outdoor elevator shaft that dropped the hundreds of feet to the marina and man-made beach below.
“Now, thisis an interesting place!” said Ponter as he stood on the lower balcony, clutching the railing with both hands. “Modern conveniences amid nature. I almost think I am back on my world.”
Mary was using an electric grill on the balcony to cook steaks she’d bought at Wegman’s. Ponter continued to look out at the lake, while Adikor seemed more interested in a large spider that was working its way along the railing.
When the steaks were done—just a shade past raw for the boys, medium well for her—Mary served them, and Ponter and Adikor tore into theirs with gloved hands, while Mary carved hers with a knife. Of course, dinner was the easy part, thought Mary. At some point, though, someone was bound to bring up the question of—
“So,” said Adikor, “where shall we sleep?”
Mary took a deep breath, then: “I thought Ponter and I would—”
“No, no, no,” said Adikor. “Two are not One. It’s I who should be sleeping with Ponter now.”
“Yes, but this is myhome,” said Mary. “My world.”
“That’s irrelevant. Ponter is myman-mate. You two have not even bonded yet.”
“Please!” said Ponter. “Let’s not fight.” He smiled at Mary, then at Adikor, but said nothing for a few moments. Then, in a tentative voice, he offered, “You know, we could all sleep together…”
“No!” said Adikor, and “No!” said Mary simultaneously. Good grief!thought Mary. A hominid ménage à trois!
“I really think,” continued Mary, “that it makes sense for Ponter and me—”
“That’s gristle,” said Adikor. “It is obvious that—”
“My beloved,” said Ponter, but perhaps since marewas the Neanderthal word for “beloved,” he started again, using a different approach. “My two loves,” he said. “You know how deeply I care about each of you. But Adikor is right—under normal circumstances, I would be with him at this time of month.” He reached out and touched Adikor affectionately. “Mare, you must get used to this. It’s going to be a reality for the rest of my life.”
Mary looked out at the lake. This side was in shade, but sun was still falling on the far shore, a mile and a half off. There were four air-conditioning/heating units in the apartment, Mary knew—one at each end of each floor. She’d been turning on the fan on the one in the master bedroom before going to bed each night, so that the white noise would drown out the cacophony of birds that hailed the dawn. She supposed if she put it on high, it might keep her from hearing any noise coming from the other bedroom…
And Ponter wasright. She didhave to get used to this.
“All right,” she said, at last, closing her eyes. “But you guys have to make breakfast, then.”
Adikor took Ponter’s hand, and smiled at Mary. “Deal,” he said.
There was already a large safe in Jock’s office, built into the far wall; it had been the first renovation Jock had ordered when the Synergy Group had bought this old mansion. The safe, embedded in concrete, met Department of Defense guidelines for being both secure and fireproof. Jock kept the codon writer in it, only bringing it out for supervised study.