Humans (11 page)

Ponter Boddit and Tukana Prat were made (or reaffirmed as—legal opinions varied) Canadian citizens at Canada’s Parliament Buildings late that afternoon. The ceremony was performed by the Federal Minister for Citizenship and Immigration, with journalists from all over the world in attendance.

Ponter had done his best with the oath, which he had memorized under Hélène Gagné’s tutelage; he only mispronounced a few words: “I affirm that I will buh faithful and bear true alluh-jance to Her Maj-us-tuh Quen Uh-lizabeth the Second, Quen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithful-luh observe the laws of Canada and fulfill my doo-tays as a Can-ad-aye-un citizen.” Hélène Gagné was so pleased with Ponter’s performance that she spontaneously applauded at the end of the speech, earning her a stern look from the minister.

Tukana had more of a struggle saying the words, but did manage to get them out, as well.

After the ceremony, there was a wine-and-cheese reception—at which Hélène noted Ponter and Tukana partook of neither. They didn’t drink milk or eat any milk-derived food; nor did they seem to have any interest in things made from grains. Hélène had wisely fed them prior to the ceremony, lest they make short work of the trays of fruit and cold cuts, which were also present. Ponter seemed to particularly like Montreal smoked meat.

Each of the Neanderthals had been presented not just with a certificate of Canadian citizenship, but also an Ontario health plan card and a passport. Tomorrow, they would fly to the United States. But there was still one more official duty for them to perform in Canada first.

“Did you enjoy your dinner with the Canadian prime minister?” asked Selgan, sitting on his saddle-seat in his round office.

Ponter nodded. “Very much so. There were many interesting people there. And we ate great thick steaks of cattle from Alberta—another part of Canada, apparently. And vegetables, too, some of which I recognized, and some I did not.”

“I should like to try this cattle myself,” said Selgan.

“It can be very good,” said Ponter, “although it seems to be almost the only mammal meat they eat—that, and a form of boar they have created through selective breeding.”

“Ah,” said Selgan. “Well, I should like to try that, too, someday.” He paused. “So, let us see where we stand. You had safely returned to the other world, but circumstances had prevented you from seeing Mare yet. Still, you had met with the highest officials of the country you were in. You had eaten well, and you were feeling…what? Contentment?”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that. But…”

“But what?” asked Selgan.

“But the contentment did not last for long.”

After the dinner at 24 Sussex Drive, Ponter had been driven to the Chateau Laurier hotel, and had retired to his massive suite of rooms. They were—
opulent
was the correct English word, he thought; far more ornately decorated than anything back in his world.

Tukana was off with Hélène Gagné, going over yet again what would be an appropriate presentation to make tomorrow at the United Nations. Ponter didn’t have to say anything there, but nonetheless he spent the evening reading up about that institution.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true: neither he nor Hak could yet read English, but he was using a clamshell computer provided by the Canadian government, which had some sort of encyclopedia loaded onto it. The encyclopedia had a text-to-speech feature that read in an irritating mechanical tone—certainly Ponter’s people could teach the Gliksins a thing or two about voice synthesis. Anyway, Hak listened to the English words spoken by the computer, and then translated them into the Neanderthal tongue for Ponter.

Early in the article on the United Nations, there was a reference to the organization’s “Charter,” apparently its founding document. Ponter was horrified by its opening:

We the Peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind…

Two wars—within a single human lifetime! There had been wars in the history of Ponter’s world, but the last one was almost twenty thousand months ago. Still, it had been devastating, and the sorrow was certainly not untold (which Hak translated as “not counted”). Rather, every youngster was taught the horrible truth, that fully 719 people had died in that war.

Such devastating loss of life! And yet these Gliksins had fought not one but two wars in as little as a thousand moons.

Still, who knew how old this United Nations was? Perhaps the “lifetime” in question had been long ago. Ponter asked Hak to listen to more of the article, and see if he could find a founding date. He did: one-nine-four-five.

The current year, as the Gliksins tallied them, was two-something, wasn’t it? “Exactly how long ago was that?” asked Ponter.

Hak told him, and Ponter felt himself sagging against his chair. The lifetime in question—the lifetime in which not one but two wars had ravaged humankind—was
this
lifetime.

Ponter wanted to know more about Gliksin war. Hélène had opened the encyclopedia to the entry on the United Nations for him before she’d left with Tukana, but Ponter managed slowly to work out the completely nonintuitive interface. “Which one is their word for ‘war?’” he asked.

Hak did an analysis of the text he’d heard and the words that had been displayed on the computer’s screen. “It is the sixth character-grouping in from the right on the ninth line of text.”

Ponter used his fingertip to help him find the spot on the flat screen. “That can’t be right,” he said. “That grouping only has three symbols in it.” The Neanderthal word for “war” was
mapartaltapa;
Ponter had often wished since coming here that he knew more about linguistics—what a help it would have been!—but one principle he did understand is that you reserved short terms for common concepts.

“I believe I am correct,” said Hak. “The word is pronounced ‘war.’”

“But—oh.”

Ponter looked down at the—
keyboard,
that was the term. He managed to find a match for the first symbol,
w,
but couldn’t find any that looked like
a
or
r
. “If you select the word,” said Hak, “I believe it can be cross-referenced.”

Ponter struggled with the touch-sensitive area in front of the keyboard, moving the little pine tree on screen until its apex touched the word, and after some experimentation, he got the word highlighted. On the left side of the screen, a list of topics appeared, and—

Ponter felt his jaw drop, as Hak read out the names.

The Gulf War.

The Korean War.

The Spanish Civil War.

The Spanish-American War.

The Vietnam War.

The War Between the States.

The War of 1812.

The War of the Roses.

On and on.

More and more.

And…

And…

Ponter’s heart was fluttering.

World War I.

World War II.

Ponter wanted to swear, but the only epithets he had at his command were the ones his species had come up with: references to the putrefaction of meat, to the elimination of bodily wastes. None of those seemed suitable just now. Until this moment, he hadn’t understood the Gliksin style of imprecations that invoked a putative higher power, calling on a superior being to make sense of the follies of man. But that really was the sort of expression needed here. The entire world at war! Ponter was almost afraid to look at the articles, afraid to hear what the death tolls had been. Why, they must have run into the thousands…

He moved his finger on the touch-sensitive pad, and let the encyclopedia speak to Hak.

In World War I, ten million soldiers had died.

And in World War II, fifty-five million people—soldiers and civilians both—had died, from causes variously termed “combat,” “starvation,” “bombing raids,” “epidemics,” “massacres,” and “radiation,”—although what that last could possibly have to do with war, Ponter had no idea.

Ponter felt physically sick. He got up from his chair, moved over to the hotel room’s window, and looked out at the nighttime panorama of this city, this Ottawa. Hélène had told him the tall edifice he could see from here on Parliament Hill was called the Peace Tower.

He opened the window as much as it would allow—which was not a lot—and let some of the wonderfully cold exterior air come in. Despite the smell, it calmed his stomach a bit, but he still found himself shaking his head back and forth over and over again.

He thought about the question his beloved Adikor had asked him upon his return from his first visit to this world:
“Are they good people, Ponter?
Should
we be in contact with them?”

And Ponter had said yes. The fact that there was any further contact with this race of—of
murderers,
of warriors—was his own doing. But he’d seen so little of their world the first time, and…

No. He’d seen
plenty
. He’d seen what they’d done to the environment, how they’d destroyed vast tracts of land, how they bred unchecked. He’d known what they were, even then, but…

Ponter took another restorative inspiration of the chill air.

He had wanted to see Mare again. And that desire had blinded him to what he’d known about the Gliksins. His nausea wasn’t caused by the shock of what he’d just learned, he knew. Rather, it was caused by the realization that he’d deliberately suppressed his own best judgment.

He looked again at the Peace Tower, tall and brown with some sort of timepiece near its apex, right at the heart of the seat of government for this country he was in. Perhaps…perhaps the Gliksins had changed. They’d created this organization he would visit tomorrow, this United Nations, specifically, so its charter had said, to
save
succeeding generations from the scourge of war.

Ponter left the window open, moved over to his bed—he doubted he’d ever get used to these elevated, soft beds the Gliksins favored—and lay down on his back, arms behind his head, staring at the swirling plaster patterns on the ceiling.

Ponter and Tukana, accompanied by Hélène Gagné and two plainclothes RCMP officers who were serving as bodyguards, were taken by limousine to Ottawa International Airport. The two Neanderthals had both been exhilarated by their earlier flight from Sudbury to Ottawa: neither of them had ever seen the terrain of Northern Ontario—which was the same mixture of pines and lakes and shield rocks as in their version of Earth—from such a wonderful vantage point.

At first, Ponter had felt some inferiority in light of all these advanced Gliksin technologies—airplanes and even spaceships. But his research last night had made him realize why these humans had progressed so much in these areas; he’d gone back to exploring various articles in the encyclopedia.

It
was
a central concept for them, deserving of its short designation.

War had made—

Even the phrases they used to describe these breakthroughs were martial.

War had made the conquest of air, the conquest of space, possible.

They pulled up to the terminal, Hak noting the irony of this term’s double meaning. Ponter had thought the building the miners used for changing clothes was huge, but this massive structure was the largest enclosed interior space he had ever seen. And it was packed with people, and their pheromones. Ponter felt woozy, and also rather embarrassed: many people were openly staring at him and Tukana.

They dealt with some paperwork formalities—Ponter didn’t quite follow the details—and then were led to an odd oversize wicket. Hélène told him and Tukana to remove their medical belts and send them down a conveyor, and also to empty the storage pouches on their clothing, which they did. And then, at Hélène’s gesture, Ponter walked through the wicket.

An alarm immediately went off, startling Ponter.

Suddenly a uniformed man was waving some sort of probe over Ponter’s body. The probe shrieked when passing over Ponter’s left forearm. “Roll up you sleeve,” said the man.

Ponter had never heard that expression before, but he guessed its meaning. He undid the closures on his sleeve, and folded back the fabric, revealing the metal and plastic rectangle of his Companion.

The man stared for a time at this, and then, almost to himself, he said, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology.”

“Pardon?” asked Ponter.

“Nothing,” said the man. “You can go on ahead.”

The flight to New York City was quite brief—not even half a daytenth. Hélène had warned Ponter both on this flight and yesterday’s that he might experience some discomfort as the plane descended, since the air pressure would be changing quickly, but Ponter didn’t feel a thing. Perhaps it was a peculiarly Gliksin affliction, caused by their tiny sinus cavities.

The plane, according to an announcement over the speakers, had to divert to the south and fly directly over the island known as Manhattan, to accommodate other air traffic.
Crowded skies,
thought Ponter.
How astonishing!
Still, Ponter was delighted. After having his fill of hearing about war last night, he’d turned to the encyclopedia’s entry on New York City. There were, he discovered, many great human-made landmarks here, and it would be wonderful to get to see them from the air. He looked for, and found, the giant green woman with the dour expression, holding aloft a torch. But, try as he might, he couldn’t spot the two towers that supposedly rose above the surrounding buildings, each an incredible hundred and ten stories tall.

When they were at last on the ground, Ponter asked Hélène about the missing—he found the word poetic—“skyscrapers.”

Hélène looked very uncomfortable. “Ah,” she said. “You mean the World Trade Center towers. Used to be two of the tallest buildings on the planet, but…” Her voice cracked slightly, which surprised Ponter. “I—I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but…” Another hesitation. “But they were destroyed by terrorists.”