Assuming Lurt could pull it off, Adikor would have access to the quantum-computing lab tomorrow. But he needed to make some arrangements before then.
Saldak was a big town, but Adikor knew most of the scientists and engineers on its Rim, and a good fraction of those who lived in the Center. In particular, he’d become friends with one of the engineers who maintained the mining robots. Dern Kord was a fat and jolly man-there were those who said he let robots do too much of his work. But a robot was just what this job called for. Adikor set out to see Dern; now that it was evening, Dern should be home from work.
Dern’s house was large and rambling; the tree that formed the bulk of its shape must have been a thousand months old, dating to the very beginnings of modern arboriculture.
“Healthy-well, healthy evening,” said Adikor as he came up to Dern’s home. Dern was seated out on his deck, reading something on an illuminated datapad. A thin mesh between the deck’s floor and the awning above it kept out insects.
“Adikor!” said Dern. “Come in, come in-watch the flap there; don’t let the bugs follow. Will you have drink? Some meat?”
Adikor shook his head. “No, thank you.”
“So, what brings you here?” asked Dern.
“How are your eyes?” asked Adikor. “Your vision?”
Dern flared his nostrils at the odd question. “Fine. I’ve got lenses, of course, but I don’t need them for reading-at least not on this pad; I just choose larger symbols.”
“Go get your lenses,” said Adikor. “I have something I want to show you.”
Dern looked puzzled, but headed into the house. A moment later, he emerged with a pair of lenses connected to a wide elasticized fabric band. He slipped the band over his head, bringing it down to nestle in the furrow behind his browridge. The lenses were on little hinges; he flipped them down over his eyes and looked at Adikor expectantly.
Adikor reached into the pouch attached to the left hip of his pant and pulled out the sheet of thin plastic he’d written on this afternoon. Adikor had made the symbols as small as he possibly could-he’d had to search for a stylus with a fine-enough point. Scanner resolution had improved since those images of Adikor hitting Ponter had been recorded, but there still was a limit to how much detail could be made out. Adikor had endured cramps in his right hand making ideograms smaller than anyone back at the archive building could possibly read.
“What’s this?” said Dern. taking the sheet and peering at it. “Oh!” he exclaimed as he began reading. “Really! Do you think? Well, well… I can’t let you have a new one, of course-not if there’s a good chance you’re going to lose it. But I’ve got several old ones that are due to be decommissioned; one of those should fit the bill.” Adikor nodded. “Thank you.”
“Now, where and when do you need this?”
Adikor was about to shush him, but for all his exuberance, Dern was no idiot. He nodded after finding the information he was looking for on the sheet. “Yes, that’s fine. I’ll be there, waiting for you.”
After dinner, Ponter and Mary got into Mary’s car and started driving back toward Sudbury. “I enjoyed today,” said Ponter. “I enjoyed getting out of the city. But I suppose I should now see other places.”
Mary smiled. “There’s a whole wide world out there waiting to meet you.”
“I understand,” said Ponter. “And I must accept my new life as… a curiosity.”
Mary opened her mouth to protest, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Ponter was a curiosity; in a crueler century, he’d have ended up as a circus freak. Finally, she just let the comment pass, and said, “Our world has a lot of variety. I mean, geographically it’s no more varied than yours, I’m sure, but we have many cultures, many kinds of architecture, many ancient buildings.”
“I understand that I must travel; that I must contribute,” said Ponter. “I had thought to stay here, to stay near Sudbury, in case, somehow, the portal reopened, but it has been so many days now. I am sure Adikor has tried; he must, therefore, have failed-the conditions must not be [360] reproducible.” Mary could hear reluctant acceptance growing behind his words. “Yes, I will go wherever I am expected to go; I will go far from here.”
By then they were well away from the lights of the inn and the small village it had been part of. Mary looked out her side window, noticing the sky.
“My God,” she said.
“What?” said Ponter.
“Look at all those stars! I’ve never seen so many!” Mary pulled the car over to the side of the country road, getting it well up on the shoulder, out of the way of any traffic that might come along. “I’ve got to have a look.” She got out of her car, and Ponter did the same. “It’s gorgeous,” said Mary, bending her neck backward and looking up.
“I always enjoy the night sky,” said Ponter.
“I never get to see it like this,” said Mary. “Not in Toronto.” She snorted. “I live on a street called Observatory Lane, but you’re lucky if you can see a few dozen stars on even the darkest winter night.”
“We do not light up the outside world at night,” said Ponter.
Mary shook her head in wonder, imagining not needing to have streetlights, not needing to protect yourself from your own kind. But suddenly her heart jumped. “There’s something in the bush,” she said softly.
She couldn’t really see Ponter as anything more than a vague outline, but she could hear him inhale deeply. “Just a raccoon,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”
Mary relaxed and tipped her head up to look at the stars some more. Her neck creaked a bit as she did so; it wasn’t a comfortable posture. But then a memory came [361] back to her from her teenage years. She stepped over to the Neon’s front, and scooted her rear up onto the hood, then worked her way back until she was leaning comfortably against the windshield on the driver’s side. She patted the hood next to her and said, “Here, Ponter. Have a seat.”
Ponter moved in the dark and made his way up onto the hood as well, the metal groaning as it took his weight. He leaned back against the glass next to Mary.
“We used to do this when I was a kid,” Mary said. “When my father took us camping.”
“It is a great way to look at the sky,” said Ponter.
“Isn’t it, though?” said Mary. She let out a long contented sigh. “Look at the Milky Way! I’ve never seen it like that!”
“Milky Way?” said Ponter. “Oh, I see, yes. We call it the Night River.”
“It’s lovely,” said Mary. She looked to her right. Ursa Major sprawled across the sky above the trees.
Ponter turned his head as well. “That pattern there,” he said. “What do you call it?”
“The Big Dipper,” said Mary. “Well, at least that part-those seven bright stars. That’s what we call it here in North America. The Brits call it ‘The Plow.’ ”
Bleep.
“A farming implement.”
Ponter laughed. “I should have known. We call it the Head of the Mammoth. See? It is a profile. That is his trunk arching out from the block-shaped head.”
“Oh, yeah-I see it. What about that one there? The zigzag shape?”
“We call it the Cracked Ice,” said Ponter.
“Yeah. I can see that. We call it Cassiopeia; that’s the name of an ancient queen. The shape is supposed to represent her throne.”
“Umm, does not that pointy part in the middle hurt her bum?”
Mary laughed. “Now that you mention it…” She continued to look at the constellation. “Say, what’s that smudge just below it?”
“That is-I do not know what name you give it; it is the closest large galaxy to ours.”
“Andromeda!” declared Mary. “I’ve always wanted to see Andromeda!” She sighed again and continued to look up at the stars. There were more than she’d ever seen in her life. “It’s so beautiful,” she said, “and-oh, my. Oh, my! What’s that?”
Ponter’s face was now slightly illuminated. “The night lights,” he said.
“Night lights? You mean the northern lights?”
“They are associated with the pole, yes.”
“Wow,” said Mary. “The northern lights! I’ve never seen them before, either.”
There was surprise in Ponter’s voice. “You haven’t?”
“No. I mean, I live in Toronto. That’s farther south than Portland, Oregon.” It was a factoid that often astonished Americans, but probably didn’t mean a thing to Ponter.
“I have seen them thousands of times,” said Ponter. “But I never tire of them.” They were both quiet for a time, enjoying the rippling curtains of light. “Is it common for your people to have not seen them?”
“I guess,” said Mary. “I mean, there’re not many of us who live in the extreme north-or south, for that matter.”
“Perhaps that explains it,” said Ponter.
“What?”
“Your people’s unawareness of the electromagnetic filaments that shape the universe; Lou and I spoke of this. It was in the night lights that we first identified such filaments; they, rather than this big bang of yours, are our way of explaining the structure of the universe.”
“Well,” said Mary. “I don’t think you’re going to convince many people that the big bang didn’t happen.”
“That is fine. Feeling a need to convince others that you are right also is something that comes from religion, I think; I am simply content to know that I am right, even if others do not know it.”
Mary smiled in the darkness. A man who cried openly, a man who didn’t always have to prove he was right, a man who treated women with respect and as equals. Quite a find, as her sister Christine would say.
And, thought Mary, it was clear that Ponter liked her-and, of course, it had to be for her mind; she must appear as, well, as homely to him as he did to-no, not to her, not anymore, but to others here on this Earth. Imagine that: a man who really did like her for who she was, not what she looked like.
Quite a find, indeed, but Mary’s heart skipped a beat. Ponter’s left hand had found her right one in the dark, and had begun gently stroking it.
And suddenly she felt every muscle in her body tense up. Yes, she could be alone with a man; yes, she could hug and comfort a man; but But, no, it was too soon for that. Too soon. Mary retrieved her hand, hopped off the hood of the car, and opened the door, the dome light stinging her eyes. She got into the driver’s seat, and, a moment later, Ponter entered from the passenger’s side, his head downcast.
They drove the rest of the way back to Sudbury in silence.