Hybrids Read online

  “Really?”

  Mary nodded. “Of course, the fertilization would have to be donein vitro .”

  Hak bleeped.

  “In glassware. Outside my body.”

  “Ah,” said Ponter. “I am surprised that your belief system supports that process, while banning so much else related to reproduction.”

  Mary shrugged. “Yeah, the Roman Catholic Church is against IVF-in vitrofertilization. But I do want a baby. I wantyour baby. And I can’t see how giving nature a little helping hand is wrong.” She lowered her gaze. “But I know you already have two children. Perhaps...perhaps you don’t want to be a father again?”

  “I willalways be a father,” said Ponter, “until the day I die.” Mary lifted her eyes, and was glad to see Ponter was looking right at her. “I had not thought about having another child, but...”

  Mary felt as though she were about to burst. She hadn’t realized until just this moment how very much indeed she wanted Ponter’s answer to be yes. “But what?” she said.

  Ponter lifted his massive shoulders, but they moved slowly, ponderously, as if he were shifting the weight of his world with them. “But we believe in zero population growth. Klast and I have two children already; they are our replacements.”

  “But Adikor and Lurt have only one child,” said Mary.

  “Dab, yes. But they may try again next year.”

  “Are they going to do that? Have you discussed it with Adikor?” Mary did not like the desperation that had come into her tone.

  “No, I have not,” said Ponter. “I suppose I could broach the topic, but even if they are not going to try again, the Gray Council-“

  “Damn it, Ponter, I’m sick of the Gray Council! I’m sick of all these rules and regulations! I’m sick of a bunch of old people controlling your life.”

  Ponter looked at Mary, his eyebrow lifted again in surprise. “They are elected, you know. The rules they enact are the rules my people have chosen for themselves.”

  Mary took a deep breath. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just-it’s just that it shouldn’t matter to anyone but you or me if we have a baby.”

  “You are correct,” said Ponter. “As is, some people in my world have more than two children. Twins are not uncommon; my nearest neighbor has twin sons. And, often enough, there will be three conceptions by a woman: one when she is nineteen years old, another when she is twenty-nine, and sometimes again when she is thirty-nine.”

  “I’mthirty-nine. Why can’t we try?”

  “There will be those who will say such a child would beunnatural ,” replied Ponter.

  Mary looked around. She moved over to one of the couches growing out of the wall, and patted the spot next to her, inviting Ponter to join her. He did.

  “Where I come from,” said Mary, “many people say that two men having-what did Louise call it back at Reuben’s place? ‘Affectionate touching of the genitals’? There are those among my species who say thatthat is unnatural, and that relations between two women are unnatural, too.” Mary’s face was firm. “But they’re wrong. I don’t know if I would have said that with such assurance before first coming to your world, but I know it now.” She nodded, as much to herself as to Ponter. “The world-anyworld-is a better place when people are in love, when people care about other people, and, as long as those people are consenting adults, it’s nobody’s business except their own who they are. A male and a female, or two males, or two females-they’re allnatural , as long as they’re in love. And a Gliksin and a Barast-that’snatural, too, if they’re in love.”

  “And weare in love,” said Ponter, taking Mary’s small hand in his two massive ones. “But, still, thereare people in your world and mine who will object to our having a child.”

  Mary nodded sadly. “I know, yes.” She let air escape from her lungs in a long, rueful sigh. “You know Reuben is black.”

  “More of a medium brown, I would say,” replied Ponter, smiling. “A rather nice shade.”

  But Mary was in no mood for jokes. “And Louise Benoît is white. There are still people in my world who object to a black man and a white woman having a relationship. But they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Just as those who might object to us being together-or having a child together-are wrong, wrong, wrong.”

  “I agree, of course, but-“

  “But what? Nothing could be a better symbol of the synergy between our worlds-and of our love for each other-than us having a baby together.”

  Ponter looked into Mary’s eyes, his golden orbs dancing with excitement. “You are right, my love. You are absolutely right.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “It was that questing spirit that made brave men and women like Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova and John Glenn ride on pillars of flame into Earth orbit...”

  Every week, Jock Krieger reviewed the press coverage of the Neanderthals, both in the hundred and forty magazines Synergy subscribed to and as collected and forwarded by various print, radio, and video clipping services. The current batch of material included a preprint of an interview with Lonwis Trob coming up inPopular Mechanics ; a five-part series from theSan Francisco Chronicle on what Neanderthal technology was doing to the future of Silicon Valley firms; an appearance by runner Jalsk Lalplun on ABC’sWide World of Sports ; an editorial from theMinneapolis Star Tribune saying Tukana Prat should win the Nobel Peace Prize for finding a way to keep contact between the two worlds open; a CNN special with Craig Ventner interviewing Borl Kadas, who headed the Neanderthal version of the Human Genome Project; an NHK documentary on Neanderthals in fact and fiction; a DVD re-release ofQuest for Fire with an audio commentary track by a Neanderthal paleoanthropologist; a new Department of Defense study of security issues related to interdimensional portals; and more.

  Louise Benoît had come down to the living room of the old mansion that housed the Synergy Group to have a look through the materials, as well. She was reading an article inNew Scientist that questioned why Neanderthals had ever domesticated dogs given that their own sense of smell was at least as good as that possessed by canines, meaning dogs would have added little to their ability to hunt. But she was interrupted when Jock blew out air noisily.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Louise, looking over the magazine at him.

  “I get sick of this,” Jock said, indicating the pile of magazines, newspaper clippings, audio tapes, and VHS cassettes. “I get sick to death of it. ‘The Neanderthals are more peaceful than we are.’ ‘The Neanderthals are more environmentally conscious than we are.’ ‘The Neanderthals are more enlightened than we are.’ Why the hell should that be?”

  “You really want to know?” asked Louise, smiling. She rummaged in the pile of magazines, then plucked out the currentMaclean’s . “Did you read the guest editorial in here?”

  “Not yet.”

  “It says that the Neanderthals are like Canadians, and the Gliksins are like Americans.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Well, the writer says the Neanderthals believe in everything that Canada stands for: socialism, pacifism, environmentalism, humanism.”

  “Good grief,” said Jock.

  “Oh, come on,” said Louise, her tone teasing. “I overheard you talking to Kevin: you agreed with Pat Buchanan when he said my country should be called ‘Soviet Canuckistan.’ “

  “Canadians are Gliksins, too, Dr. Benoît.”

  “Not all of them,” Louise said, still teasing. “After all, Ponter is a Canadian citizen.”

  “I hardly think that’s the reason they keep coming off so well in the press. It’s that bloody left-wing journalistic bias.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Louise, setting down her magazine. “The real reason the Neanderthals keep coming off better than us is that they’ve got bigger brains. Neanderthal cranial capacities are ten percent greater than our own. We’ve got just barely enough brains to think through the first stage of ideas: if we build a better spear, we can kill more animals. But
, unless we make a real effort, we don’t see ahead to stage two: if we kill too many animals, there won’t be any left, and we’ll starve. The Neanderthals, it seems, grasped the big picture from day one.”

  “Then why did we defeat them here, in the past of this Earth?”

  “Because we had consciousness-true self-awareness-and they did not. Remember my theory: the universe split into two when consciousness first emerged. In one branch, we, and only we, had it. In the other, they, and only they, had it. Is it any wonder that, regardless of brain size or physical robustness, it was the truly conscious beings who prevailed in their respective timelines? But now we’re comparing conscious beings with 1400 cc’s of brain to those with over 1500.” She smiled. “We’ve been waiting for the big-brained aliens to show up, and now they have. But they didn’t come from Alpha Centauri; they came from right next door.”

  Jock frowned. “A big brain doesn’t necessarily mean more intelligence.”

  “Notnecessarily , no. Still, the averageHomo sapiens has an IQ of 100, by definition. And it’s distributed on a bell curve: for every one of us with an IQ of 130, there’s another with an IQ of 70. But suppose they had an average IQ of 110 instead of 100-even before they purged their gene pool. That might make all the difference.”

  “You mentioned the bell curve. I read that book, and-“

  “And it was full of crap. IQ simply doesn’t vary between racial groups except when malnutrition has been a factor. You’ve met my boyfriend, Reuben Montego. Well, he’s an M.D., and he’s black. IfThe Bell Curve was right, he should be an incredible rarity, but of course he’s not. Previous disparities were caused by economic or social barriers to higher education for blacks, not by any inherent inferiority.”

  “But you’re saying weare inherently inferior to the Neanderthals?”

  Louise shrugged. “There’s no doubt that we are physically inferior. Why should it be so hard to accept that we also are mentally?”

  Jock made a disgusted face. “I guess when you put it like that...” But then he shook his head. “Still, I hate it. When I was at RAND, we spent all our time trying to outfox enemies that were our match intellectually. Oh, sometimes they had a hardware advantage, and sometimes we did, but there was no notion of one side being inherentlybrighter than the other. But here-“

  “We’re not trying to outfox the Neanderthals,” said Louise. And then, lifting her eyebrows, she added, “Are we?”

  “What? No, no. Of course not. Don’t be silly, young lady.”

  “A baby?” said Lurt Fradlo, hands on her broad hips. “You and Ponter want to have a baby?”

  Mary nodded timidly. She’d left Ponter at his home, and had journeyed by travel cube to Lurt’s house in Saldak Center. “That’s right.”

  Lurt opened her arms and gave Mary a big hug. “Wonderful!” she said. “Absolutely wonderful!”

  Mary felt her whole body relaxing. “I didn’t know if you would approve.”

  “Why would I not approve?” asked Lurt. “Ponter is a wonderful person, and you are a wonderful person. You will make terrific parents.” She paused. “I cannot tell with you Gliksins. How old are you, my dear?”

  “Thirty-nine years,” replied Mary. “About five hundred and twenty months.”

  Lurt lowered her voice. “For our kind, it is difficult to conceive by that age.”

  “Mine, too, although we have all sorts of drugs and techniques that can help. But there is one little problem...” “Oh?”

  “Yes. Barasts, like you and Ponter, have twenty-four pairs of chromosomes. Gliksins like me have only twenty-three.”

  Lurt frowned. “That will make fertilization very difficult.”

  Mary nodded. “Oh, yes. I doubt we could do it at all just by having sex.”

  “Do not give up trying, though!” said Lurt, grinning.

  Mary grinned back. “Not a chance. But I was hoping to find a way that we could combine Ponter’s DNA and mine. One of the chromosomes in my kind formed from the union of two of the chromosomes in the common ancestor we both share. Genetically, the actual content of the DNA sequences is very similar, but it happens to all be on one long chromosome inHomo sapiens , instead of two shorter ones inHomo neanderthalensis .”

  Lurt was nodding slowly. “And you hope to overcome this problem?”

  “That was my thought. I think it could be done, even just with the techniques my people have available, but it would be very tricky. But your people are further along in a lot of ways. I was wondering if you knew anyone who might be an expert in this area?”

  “I very much like you, Mare, but youdo have a tendency to put your foot right in it.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Thereis a solution to your problem-aperfect solution. But...”

  “But what?”

  “But it is banned.”

  “Banned? Why?”

  “Because of the danger it posed to our way of life. There was a geneticist named Vissan Lennet. Until four months ago, she lived in Kraldak.”

  “Which is?”

  “A town perhaps 350,000 armspans south of here. But she left.”

  “She left Kraldak?” said Mary.

  But Lurt shook her head. “She lefteverything .”

  Mary felt her eyebrows shooting up. “My God-do you mean she killed herself?”

  “What? No, she is still alive. At least, as far as anyone knows-not that we have any way to contact her.”

  Mary gestured at Lurt’s forearm. “Can’t you just call her up?”

  “No. That is what I am trying to say. Vissan left our society. She gouged out her Companion and went to live in the wilderness.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Vissan was a great geneticist, but she had developed a device the High Gray Council could not countenance. In fact, the local High Grays called me and asked my opinion of it. I did not want to see research suppressed, but the High Grays felt they had no choice, given what Vissan had done.”

  “Good Christ, you make it sound as though she created some sort of genetic weapon!”

  “What? No, no, of course not. She was not a lunatic. The device Vissan built was a...a ‘codon writer,’ I suppose would be the correct phrase. It could be programmed to output any sequence of deoxyribonucleic acid or ribonucleic acid imaginable, along with associated proteins. If you could think it up, Vissan’s codon writer could produce it.”

  “Really? Wow! That sounds amazingly useful.”

  “It wastoo useful, at least according to the High Gray Council. You see, among many other things, it allowed the production of...of...I am not sure of your word: the half-sets of chromosomes that exist in sex cells.”

  “Haploid sets,” said Mary. “The twenty-three-excuse me, twenty-fourchromosomes-that are found in sperm or eggs.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But why would that be a problem?” asked Mary.

  “Because of our system of justice,” said Lurt. “Do you not see? When we sterilize a criminal and his or her close relatives, we are preventing them from producing haploid chromosome sets; we are preventing them from being able to reproduce. But Vissan’s codon writer would have allowed the sterilized to circumvent their punishment, and still pass their genes on to the next generation, by simply programming the device to produce chromosomes for them containing their own genetic information.”

  “And that’s why the device was banned?”

  “Exactly,” said Lurt. “The High Grays ordered the research halted-and Vissan was furious. She said she could not be part of a society that suppressed knowledge, and so she left.”

  “So...so Vissan is living off the land?”

  Lurt nodded. “It is easy enough to do. As youths, we are all trained in the required skills.”

  “But...but it’s soon going to be the dead of winter.”

  “Doubtless she will have built a cabin or some other shelter. In any event, Vissan’s codon writer is the device you need. There was only one prototype built, before the High
Gray Council banned it. Normally, of course, nothing can go missing in this world: the Companion implants see and record all. But Vissan disposed of the prototypeafter she had gouged out her Companion, and while she was alone. The prototype likely still exists, and it is clearly the ideal tool for making the hybrid child you desire.”

  “If I can only find it,” said Mary.

  “Exactly,” said Lurt. “If you can only find it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “And it was that questing spirit that letEagleand Columbia, Intrepidand Yankee Clipper, Aquariusand Odyssey, Antaresand Kitty Hawk, Falconand Endeavour, Orionand Casper,and Challengerand Americafly to the moon...”

  Mary’s permanent Companion implant had to be installed by a Neanderthal surgeon. Prior to the operation, Mary had returned to the equipment room above the Debral mine where her temporary unit had originally been strapped on, since that was the only place at which its clasps would open. Then, accompanied by two burly Neanderthal enforcers, Mary had been taken to the hospital in Saldak Center.

  The surgeon, a female named Korbonon, was a member of generation 145, about Mary’s age. Korbonon normally worked on repairing severely damaged limbs, such as those that sometimes resulted when a hunt went horribly wrong; her knowledge of musculature and nerve tissue was second to none.

  “This is going to be a bit tricky,” said Korbonon. The temporary Companion was sitting on a small table, hooked up to an external power source; it was unattached to Mary, but still doing translations for her, through its external speaker. Korbonon clearly wasn’t used to having her speech translated; she spoke loudly, as if Mary could understand her Neanderthal words. “Your forearm is less muscled than a Barast one, which may make anchoring the Companion difficult. But I see what they said about Gliksin proportions is true: your upper and lower arms are the same length; that should give us some extra territory to work with.” Barast forearms were noticeably shorter than their upper arms; their shins were also shorter than their thighs.