It had been an uncomfortable night for Mary.
Reuben Montego had wind chimes in his backyard; Mary thought all people with wind chimes should be shot, but, well, given that Reuben did have a couple of acres of land, normally they probably didn’t disturb anyone else. Still, the constant tinkling had made it hard for her to get to sleep.
There’d been much discussion of sleeping arrangements. Reuben had a queen-size bed in his bedroom, a couch upstairs in his office, and another down in the living room. Unfortunately, neither of the couches folded out into beds. Ultimately, they agreed to give Ponter the bed; he needed it more than anyone else. Reuben took the upstairs couch, Louise had the downstairs couch for the first night, and Mary slept in a La-Z-Boy, also in the living room.
Ponter was indeed sick-but Hak wasn’t. Mary, Reuben, and Louise had agreed to take turns giving further language lessons to the implant. Louise said she was a night person, anyway, so Hak could be taught pretty much around the clock now. And Louise had indeed disappeared into Ponter’s room a little before 10:00 P.M., not coming down to the living room again until after 2:00 A.M. Mary wasn’t sure if it was the sound of Louise’s arrival that woke her, or whether she had really already been awake, but she knew she had to go up now and help Hak learn more English.
Speaking to the Companion was uncomfortable for Mary, not because she was unnerved talking to a computer-far from it; she was fascinated-but because she had to go alone into Ponter’s upstairs bedroom, and because she had to close the door behind her, lest the noise of her conversations with the Companion disturb Reuben sleeping next door.
She was astonished by how much more fluent Hak had become in the hours the Companion had spent talking with Louise.
Fortunately, Ponter slept right through the language lesson, although Mary did have a brief moment of panic when he suddenly moved, rolling over on his side. If Mary understood what Hak was trying to convey, the Companion was pumping white noise through Ponter’s auditory implants so that the quiet conversations Hak was having wouldn’t disturb Ponter.
Mary only managed about an hour of naming nouns and acting out verbs for Hak before she was too tired to go on. She excused herself and went back downstairs. Louise had stripped down to her bra and panties and was lying on the couch, partly covered by an afghan.
Mary leaned back in the recliner, and this time, out of sheer exhaustion, fell quickly to sleep.
By morning, Ponter’s fever had apparently broken; perhaps the aspirin and antibiotics Reuben had given him were helping. The Neanderthal got out of bed and came downstairs-and, to Mary’s shock, he was absolutely naked. Louise was still asleep, and Mary, curled up in the recliner, had only recently awoken. For half a second, she was afraid Ponter had come down looking for her or-no, doubtless, if he were interested in anyone, it was surely the young, beautiful French-Canadian.
But although he glanced briefly at both Louise and Mary, it turned out he was really heading for the kitchen. He apparently hadn’t noticed that Mary’s eyes were open.
She was going to speak up, objecting to his nudity, but, well…
My goodness, Mary thought, as he crossed through the living room. My goodness. He might not be much to look at above the neck, but…
She swiveled her head to watch his buns as he disappeared into the kitchen, and she watched again as he re-emerged, holding one of Reuben’s cans of Coke; Reuben had a whole shelf of his fridge devoted to the stuff. The scientist in Mary was fascinated to see a Neanderthal in the flesh, and And the woman in her simply enjoyed watching Ponter’s muscular body move.
Mary allowed herself a little smile. She’d thought, perhaps, that she’d never be able to look at a man in that way again.
It was nice to know she still could.
Mary, Reuben, and Louise had been repeatedly interviewed by phone now, and Reuben, with Inco’s permission, had organized a press conference-all three of them standing around a speakerphone in a conference call to journalists, who were shooting the proceedings through the living-room window with zoom lenses.
Meanwhile, tests were being done for smallpox, bubonic plague, and a range of other diseases. Blood samples had been flown in Canadian Forces jets to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and to the level-four hot lab at the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health in Winnipeg. The results from the first round of cultures came in at 11:14 A.M. No pathogens had been found in Ponter’s blood yet, and no one else who had been with him-including all the others now quarantined at St. Joseph’s-were showing any signs of illness. While other cultures were being tested, the microbiologists were also looking at blood samples for unknown pathogens-cells or other inclusions of kinds they’d never seen before.
“It’s a pity he’s a physicist rather than a physician,” said Reuben to Mary, after the press conference.
“Why?” asked Mary.
“Well, we’re lucky we have any useful antibiotics left to offer him. Bacteria build up immunity over time; I usually give my patients erythromycin, because penicillin is so ineffective these days, but I actually gave Ponter penicillin first. It’s based on bread mold, of course, and if Ponter’s people don’t make bread, then they may never have stumbled on to it, so it might be very effective against any bacteriological infection he brought with him from his world. Then I gave him erythromycin, and a bunch of others, to combat anything he caught here. Still, Ponter’s people probably have antibiotics of their own, but they’re likely different from those we’ve discovered. If he could tell us what they use, we’d have a new weapon in the war on disease-one that our bacteria don’t yet have any resistance to.”
Mary nodded. “Interesting,” she said. “It’s too bad the gateway between his world and ours closed almost immediately. There are probably lots of fascinating trade possibilities between two versions of Earth. Pharmaceuticals are surely just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the foods we eat don’t occur in the wild. He may not care for wheat products, but the modern potato and tomato, corn, the domestic chicken and pig and cow-all of them are forms of life we essentially created through selective breeding. We could trade those for whatever foodstuffs they’ve got.”
Reuben nodded. “And that’s just for starters. There’s doubtless lots more to be done in terms of trading mining sites. I bet we know where all sorts of valuable minerals, fossils, and so on are that they haven’t found, and vice versa.”
Mary realized he was probably right. “Anything natural that’s older than a few tens of thousands of years would be present in both worlds, wouldn’t it? Another Lucy, another Tyrannosaurus Sue, another set of Burgess Shale fossils, another Hope diamond-at least, the original uncut stone.” She paused, considering it all.
By the middle of the day, Ponter was clearly feeling much better. Mary and Louise both looked in at him, covered by a blanket, lying on the bed, as he slept quietly. “I’m glad he doesn’t snore,” said Louise. “With a nose that big…”
“Actually,” said Mary, softly, “that’s probably why he doesn’t snore; he’s getting plenty of airflow.”
Ponter rolled over on the bed.
Louise looked at him for a moment, then turned back to Mary. “I’m going to have a shower,” she said.
Mary’s period had begun that morning; she’d certainly like a shower herself. “I’ll have one after you.”
Louise headed into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Ponter stirred again, then woke. “Mare,” he said softly. He slept with his mouth closed, and his voice on waking didn’t sound at all raw.
“Hello, Ponter. Did you sleep well?”
He raised his long, blond eyebrow-Mary still hadn’t gotten used to the sight of it rolling up his browridge-as if he thought it a preposterous question.
He cocked his head; Louise had started the shower. And then he flared his nostrils, each the diameter of a twenty-five-cent piece, and looked at Mary.
And suddenly she realized what was happening, and she felt enormously embarrassed and uncomfortable. He could smell that she was menstruating. Mary backed across the room; she could hardly wait for her turn at the shower.
Ponter’s expression was neutral. “Moon,” he said.
Yes, thought Mary, it’s that time of the month. But she certainly didn’t want to talk about it. She hurried back downstairs.