“I was in Jock’s office last night,” said Mary, without preamble, “while he was off at the hospital with Lonwis. He’s had a virus designed to kill Neanderthals.”
Louise’s accented voice was filled with disbelief. “What?”
“I think he’s going to wipe them out—all of them.”
“Why?”
Mary looked over her shoulder, just to be sure they weren’t being followed. “Because the grass isgreener on the other side of the fence. Because he wants to claim their version of Earth for our kind of humans.” She kicked some litter out of her way. “Maybe so we can start over without all this.”
Up ahead, on the left side of the road, an amusement park was visible, closed for the winter, its roller coaster a lump of rusty intestines. “What—what should we do?” said Louise. “How do we stop him?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “I only stumbled onto the virus design by accident. My network connection went down, and so I went to his office to use his workstation, since he was gone for the day. But he’d left in such a hurry when Lonwis had his heart attack that he hadn’t logged off his account. I copied the virus designs onto a CD, but I think what I’d really like to do is get back into his account again, and modify the master file so that it won’t produce anything deadly. I presume he’s planning to feed those instructions into the codon writer, and then release the virus into the Neanderthal world.”
“What if he’s already made the actual virus?” said Louise.
“I don’t know. If he has, we may be sunk.”
They were walking along a narrow sidewalk. A car drove by them.
“Have you thought about just going to the media with the CD—you know, blowing the whistle?”
Mary nodded. “But I want to…to defusehis virus before I do that. And I’ll need help finding a way back into Jock’s computer.”
“The Synergy Group network uses RSA encryption,” said Louise.
“Is there any way to crack that?”
Louise smiled. “Before we met our Neanderthal friends I would have said no, there was no practical way. After all, most encryption systems, including RSA, are based on keys that are the products of two large prime numbers. You have to be able to figure out the prime factors of the key number to crack the code, and with 512-bit encryption, like our system here uses, it would take conventional computers millennia to try all the possible factors. But quantum computers—”
Mary got it in a flash. “Quantum computers try all possible factors simultaneously.” But then she frowned. “So, what are you proposing? That we have the portal shut down so that Ponter’s quantum computer can crack Jock’s encryption for us?”
Louise shook her head. “Setting aside the fact that Ponter’s is hardly the only quantum computer that exists in the Neanderthal world—it’s just the biggest one, that’s all—we don’t need to go there to get this problem solved.” She smiled. “You may have spent the last couple of months gallivanting over two universes, but I’ve been hard at work right here, and my job was to build our own quantum computer, based on what I’d learned from Ponter during our quarantine. We’ve got a perfectly fine little quantum computer in my lab here at Synergy. It’s got nowhere near enough registers to do what Ponter’s big unit did—open a stable portal to another universe—but it certainly can crack 512-bit encryption codes.”
“You’re wonderful, Louise.”
Louise smiled. “Nice of you to finally notice.”
As soon as Ponter and Adikor returned from the hospital, Mary said they should go for lunch—hoping that Mrs. Wallace wouldn’t remark to Jock that this was the secondtime she’d supposedly gone out to lunch today. Once they were outdoors, Mary led them out to the back of the mansion, and they walked along the sandy beach, a cold wind coming across the gray choppiness of Lake Ontario.
“Something is clearly upsetting you,” said Ponter. “What is it?”
“Jock has created a biological weapon,” Mary said. “It’s a virus that determines if the host cell belongs to a Neanderthal. If it does, it invokes a hemorrhagic fever.”
She heard Ponter’s and Adikor’s Companions bleep; not surprisingly, the subject of tropical diseases had not come up so far. “Hemorrhagic fevers are fatal,” said Mary. “Ebola is the classic example from my world; it causes blood to leak out of the eyes and other orifices. Such fevers are highly contagious and we don’t have a cure for them.”
“Why would anyone make such a thing?” asked Ponter, his voice full of revulsion.
“To wipe your world free of indigenous humans, so that my kind could claim your version of Earth—as a second home, maybe.”
Ponter apparently could find no word in his own language to convey the sentiment he wanted to express. “ Christ,” said his untranslated voice.
“I agree,” said Mary. “But I’m not sure how to stop Jock. I mean, he might be acting alone, or his government—and possibly mine, too—might be behind this.”
“Have you told anyone besides us?” asked Ponter.
“Louise. And I’ve asked her to tip off Reuben Montego, too.”
Adikor said, “Are you sure they can be trusted?”
But before Mary could answer, Ponter spoke. “I would trust those Gliksins with my life.”
Mary nodded. “We can count on them. But we can’t be sure about anyone else.”
“Well,” said Ponter, “not anyone else in thisworld. But everyonein my world stands to lose if Jock releases his virus. We should go there, and…”
“And what?” said Mary.
Ponter lifted his shoulders. “And shut down the portal. Sever the link. Protect our home.”
“There are more than a dozen Barasts here, on this side of the portal,” said Mary.
“We must get them home first, then,” said Ponter.
“The reason they’re here is to keepthe High Gray Council from closing the portal,” said Adikor. “It won’t be easy to convince them to return—and, regardless, who knows when we’ll be able to move Lonwis?”
Ponter frowned. “Still, it’s too dangerous to let Jock have a way of transmitting his virus to our world.”
“Maybe we’ve got it wrong,” said Adikor. “Maybe Jock just hates the fact that there are Barasts here, on this Earth. Maybe he intends to release his virus here.”
“In which case,” said Ponter, “the first step is still to get all Barasts back to our side. But you heard what he said: ‘I get reports on all Neanderthal comings and goings.’ It would be easier for him to simply track down the handful of Barasts already here and kill us by more conventional means.”
Adikor took a deep breath. “I guess you’re right.” He looked at Mary, then back at Ponter. “When you returned from your first visit to this world, I asked you whether the Gliksins were good people, whether we should try to re-establish contact with them.”
Ponter nodded. “I know. This is my fault. It’s—”
“ No,” said Mary emphatically. If there was one thing all the brochures Keisha had given her had taught her, it was that you can’t blame the victim. “No, it is not your fault, Ponter.”
“You are kind,” said Ponter. “So, how should we proceed?”
“I’m going to get back into Jock’s computer tonight, after he leaves,” said Mary, “and modify the viral design, so that it isn’t dangerous. Let’s just pray he hasn’t already output the actual virus.”
“Mare…” said Ponter gently.
“I know, I know. You don’t pray. But maybe you should start.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
“Who would have thought that both destinies for Mars could be fulfilled? But, of course, now they can. We will travel to the Mars of this universe, the one that graces the night skies of the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, and, as has ever been our way, we will conquer this new frontier, making an additional home forHomo sapiens there…”