Adikor and Jasmel walked back from the mine to Adikor’s home, the house he’d shared with Ponter. The lighting ribs came on in response to Adikor’s spoken request, and Jasmel looked around with interest.
This was Jasmel’s first time visiting what had been her father’s residence; Two always became One by the men coming into the Center, rather than the women going out to the Rim.
Jasmel was fascinated in a melancholy sort of way as she poked about the house, looking at Ponter’s collection of sculptures. She’d known he liked stone rodents, and had indeed made a habit of giving him such carvings every time there was a lunar eclipse. Jasmel knew Ponter particularly liked rodents made of minerals that weren’t indigenous to the animal’s own area-his pride and joy, judging by its place next to the wadlak slab-was a half-size beaver, a local animal, molded from malachite imported from central Evsoy.
While she continued to putter around, Adikor’s Companion made a plunk sound. “Healthy day,” he said into it. “Oh, wonderful, love. Great news! Be patient a beat…” He turned to Jasmel. “You’ll want to hear this; it’s my [154] woman-mate, Lurt. She’s got an analysis of that liquid I found in the quantum-computing lab after your father disappeared.” Adikor pulled out a control bud on his Companion, activating the external speaker.
“Jasmel Ket-Ponter’s daughter-is with me now,” said Adikor. “Go ahead.”
“Healthy day, Jasmel,” said Lurt.
“And to you,” said Jasmel.
“All right,” continued Lurt, “This should surprise you. Do you know what the liquid you brought me is?”
“Water, I’d thought,” said Adikor. “Isn’t it?”
“Sort of. It’s in fact heavy water.”
Jasmel raised her eyebrow.
“Really?” said Adikor.
“Yes,” said Lurt. “Pure heavy water. Of course, heavy-water molecules do occur in nature; they make up about point-zero-one percent of normal rainwater, for instance. But to get a concentration like this-well, I’m not sure how it would be done. I suppose you could devise a technique to fractionate naturally occurring water, based on the fact that heavy water is indeed about ten percent heavier, but you’d have to process an enormous amount of water to separate out the amount you said you found. I don’t know of any facility that can do that, and I can’t think of any reason why someone would want to do it.”
Adikor looked at Jasmel, then back at his wrist. “There’s no way it’s naturally occurring? No way it could have welled up from the rocks?”
“Not a chance,” said Lurt’s voice. “It was slightly contaminated with what I eventually realized was the cleaning solution used on the floors of your lab; there must have [155] been a dried residue of it that dissolved in the water. But otherwise it was absolutely pure. Ground water would have minerals dissolved in it; this was manufactured. By whom, I don’t know, and how, I’m not sure-but it absolutely isn’t something that occurred naturally.”
“Fascinating,” said Adikor. “And there was no trace of Ponter’s DNA?”
“No. There was a little of your own-doubtless you sloughed off some cells while mopping up the water-but none of anyone else’s. No traces of blood plasma or anything else that might have come from him, either.”
“All right. Many thanks!”
“Healthy day, my dear,” said Lurt’s voice.
“Healthy day,” repeated Adikor, and he pulled the control bud that broke the connection.
“What is heavy water?” asked Jasmel.
Adikor explained, then: “It must be the key,” he said.
“You’re telling the truth about the source of the heavy water?” asked Jasmel.
“Yes, of course,” Adikor said. “I collected it from the floor of the computing chamber after Ponter disappeared.”
“It’s not poisonous, is it?”
“Heavy water? I can’t imagine why it would be.”
“What uses does it have?”
“None that I know of.”
“There’s no way my father’s body could have been-I don’t knowconverted somehow into heavy water?”
“I highly doubt it,” said Adikor. “And there’s no trace of the chemicals that made up his body. He didn’t disintegrate or spontaneously combust; he simply disappeared.”
[156] Adikor shook his head. “Maybe tomorrow, at the dooslarm basadlarm, we can explain to the adjudicator why we need to go down to the lab. Until then, I hope Ponter is all right, wherever he might be.”
After getting Mary Vaughan set up in the genetics lab at Laurentian, Reuben Montego grabbed some lunch at a Taco Bell, then headed back to St. Joseph’s Health Centre. In the lobby he saw Louise Benoit, that beautiful French-Canadian postdoctoral student from SNO. She was arguing with someone who appeared to be from the hospital’s security department.
“But I saved his life!” Reuben heard Louise exclaim. “He’d certainly want to see me!”
Reuben walked up to the young woman. “Hello,” he said. “What’s the problem?”
The woman turned her lovely face toward him, her brown eyes going wide with gratitude. “Oh, Dr. Montego!” she said. “Thank God you’re here. I came to see how our friend is doing, but they won’t let me go up to his floor.”
“I’m Reuben Montego,” said Reuben to the security man, a muscular fellow with red hair. “I’m Mr. Ponter’s…” Well, why not? “… general practitioner; you can confirm that with Dr. Singh.”
“I know who you are,” said the security man. “And, yes, you’re on the approved list.”
“Well, this young lady is with me. She did indeed save Ponter’s life at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.”
“Very well,” said the man. “Sorry to be a pain, but we’ve got reporters and curious members of the public trying to sneak in all the time, and-”
At that moment, Dr. Naonihal Singh walked by, sporting a dark brown turban. “Dr. Singh!” called Reuben.
“Hello,” said Singh, coming over and shaking Reuben’s hand. “Escaping from the telephone, are we? Mine has been ringing off the hook.”
Reuben smiled. “Mine, too. Everybody wants to know about our Mr. Ponter, it seems.”
“You know I’m delighted that he is well,” said Singh, “but, really, I would like to discharge him. We don’t have enough hospital beds as it is, thanks to Mike Harris.”
Reuben nodded sympathetically. The tightwad former premier of Ontario had closed or amalgamated many hospitals across the province.
“And,” continued Singh, “not putting too fine a point on it, but if he could be gone from here, perhaps I would stop being pestered by the media.”
“Where should we take him?” asked Reuben.
“That I am not knowing,” replied Singh. “But if he is well, he does not belong in a hospital.”
Reuben nodded. “All right, okay. We’ll take him with us when we leave. Is there a way to sneak him out without the press seeing?”
“The whole idea,” said Singh, “is for the press to know he is gone.”
“Yes, yes,” said Reuben. “But we’d like to get him somewhere safe before they realize.”
“I see,” said Singh. “Take him out via the underground garage. Park in there; take the staff elevator down to B2, and exit through the corridor there. As long as Ponter keeps his head down in your car, no one will see him departing.”
“Excellent,” said Reuben.
“Please to take him today,” said Singh.
Reuben nodded. “I will.”
“Thank you,” said Singh.
Reuben and Louise headed upstairs.
“Hello, Ponter,” said Reuben, as he came into the hospital room. Ponter was sitting up on the bed, wearing the same clothes he’d been found in.
At first Reuben thought Ponter had been watching TV, but then the doctor noticed the way he was holding up his left arm, with Hak’s glass eye faced toward the monitor. More likely, the Companion had been listening to further language samples, trying to pick up more words from context.
“Hello, Reuben,” said Hak, presumably on behalf of Ponter. Ponter turned to look at Louise. Reuben noted that he didn’t react the way a normal human male might; there was no smile of delight at the unexpected visit from a gorgeous young woman.
“Louise,” said Reuben. “Meet Ponter.”
Louise stepped forward. “Hello, Ponter!” she said. “I’m Louise Benoit.”
“Louise pulled you out of the water,” Reuben said.
Ponter now did smile warmly; perhaps everyone here looked the same to him, thought Reuben. “Lou-” said Hak’s voice. Ponter shrugged apologetically.
“He can’t make the ee sound in your name,” said Reuben.
Louise smiled. “That’s fine. You can call me Lou; lots of my friends do.”
“Lou,” repeated Ponter, speaking for himself in his deep voice. “I-you-I…”
Reuben looked at Louise. “We’re still building up his vocabulary. I’m afraid we haven’t gotten to social niceties yet. I’m sure he’s trying to say thank you for saving his life.”
“My pleasure,” said Louise. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Reuben nodded. “And speaking of being all right,” he said, “Ponter, you from here go.”
Ponter’s one continuous eyebrow rolled up his browridge. “Yes!” said Hak, speaking again for him. “Where? Where go?”
Reuben scratched the side of his shaved head. “That’s a good question.”
“Far,” said Hak. “Far.”
“You want to go far away?” said Reuben. “Why?”
“The-the…” Hak trailed off, but Ponter moved a hand up, covering his giant nose-perhaps the Neanderthal equivalent of pinching one’s nostrils.
“The smell?” said Reuben. He nodded and turned to Louise. “With a honker like that, I’m not surprised that he’s got a keen sense of smell. I hate the smell of hospitals myself, and I spend a lot of time in them.”
Louise looked at Ponter, but spoke to Reuben. “You still have no idea where he’s from?”
“No.”
“I’m thinking parallel world,” said Louise, simply.
“What?” said Reuben. “Oh, come on!”
Louise shrugged. “Where else could he be from?”
“Well, that’s a good question, but…”
“And if he is from a parallel world,” said Louise, “suppose that world doesn’t have internal-combustion engines, or any of the other things that pollute our air. If you really did have a very sensitive nose, you’d never adopt stinking technologies.”
“Perhaps, but that hardly means he’s from another universe.”
“Either way,” said Louise, brushing her long, brown hair out of her eyes, “he probably wants to go somewhere away from civilization. Somewhere where it doesn’t smell as bad.”
“Well, I can get a leave from Inco,” said Reuben. “The beauty of being the staff physician is that you get to write your own leave authorizations. I’d really like to keep working with him.”
“I’ve got nothing to do, either,” said Louise, “while they’re draining the SNO facility.”
Reuben felt his heart pound. Damn, he was still a hound dog! But surely Louise was thinking of coming with them because of her scientific interest in Ponter. Still, it would be lovely to spend more time with her; her accent was incredibly sexy.
“I wonder if the authorities will try to take him again,” said Reuben.
“It’s only been a day since he got here,” said Louise, “and I bet no one in Ottawa is really taking it seriously yet. It’s just another crazy National Enquirer — type story. Federal agents and military types don’t show up every time someone claims a UFO has been sighted. I’m sure they haven’t even begun to think this might be real.” The smells are indeed awful, thought Ponter, as he looked at Lou and Reuben. They made a stark contrast: him with dark skin and completely bald, and her with skin even paler than Ponter’s own, and with thick, brown hair cascading past her narrow shoulders.
Ponter was still frightened and confused, but Hak whispered soothing words into his cochlear implants whenever the Companion detected that Ponter’s vital signs were getting too agitated. Without Hak’s aid, Ponter felt sure he would have already gone mad.
So much had happened in such a short time! Just yesterday, he had awoken in his own bed with Adikor, had fed his dog, had gone to work …
And now he was here, wherever here might be. Hak was right; this must be Earth. Ponter rather suspected there were other habitable planets in the infinite reaches of space, but he seemed to weigh the same here as he had at home, and the air was breathable-breathable, in the way that his beloved Adikor’s cooking might be said to be edible! There were foul aromas, gaseous smells, fruity smells, chemical smells, smells he couldn’t even begin to identify. But, he had to admit, the air did sustain him, and the food they had given him was (mostly!) chemically compatible with his digestive system.
So: Earth. And surely not Earth of the past. There were parts of modern Earth, especially in equatorial regions, that were little explored, but, as Hak had pointed out, the vegetation here was largely the same as that in Saldak, meaning it was unlikely that he was on another continent, or in the southern hemisphere. And although it was warm, many of the trees he’d seen were deciduous; this couldn’t be an equatorial area.
The future, then? But no. If humanity faded from existence, for some unfathomable reason, it wouldn’t be Gliksins that rose to take its place. Gliksins were extinct; a revival of them would be as unlikely as one of dinosaurs.
If this was not just Earth, but in fact the same part of Earth Ponter himself had come from, then where were the vast clouds of passenger pigeons? He’d seen not a single one since arriving here. Maybe, thought Ponter, the nauseating smells drove them away.
But no.
No.
This was neither the future, nor the past. It was the present — a parallel world, a world where, incredibly, despite their innate stupidity, the Gliksins had not gone extinct.
“Ponter,” said Reuben.
Ponter looked up, a vaguely lost expression on his face, as if a reverie had been broken. “Yes?” he said.
“Ponter, we will take you somewhere else. I’m not sure where. But, well, for starters, we’ll get you out of here. You, um, you can come stay with me.”
Ponter tipped his head, listening to Hak’s translation, no doubt. He looked puzzled at a few points; presumably Hak wasn’t quite sure how to render some of the words Reuben had used.
“Yes,” said Ponter, at last. “Yes. We go from here.”
Reuben gestured for Ponter to take the lead.
“Open door,” said Ponter, speaking on his own behalf, with evident delight, as he pulled open the hospital room’s door. “Go through door,” he said, following the words with the appropriate deed. He then waited for Louise and Reuben to exit as well. “Close door,” he said, shutting the door behind them. And then he smiled broadly, and when Ponter smiled broadly, it measured almost a foot from edge to edge. “Ponter out!”