“Jasmel, sweetheart!” shouted Ponter, looking up. “I—”
“Come right now!” Jasmel replied. “There’s no telling how long we can keep this open. Just follow the cable—use that ladder, there, to get up here. The computing-room floor is about half an armspan below where my head is; you should have no trouble finding it.”
Jasmel then pulled her head back over to her side and ran over and up into the control room.
There was a flurry of activity visible on the monitor; it was clear no one was quite prepared for this. Two men went to get the ladder Jasmel had indicated. One of the men gave Ponter a great hug, which Ponter enthusiastically returned—it seemed that he hadn’t been mistreated by the Gliksins.
And now a yellow-haired woman had appeared next to Ponter; she hadn’t been there before, and she looked quite winded. She stood on her toes and pressed her lips against Ponter’s cheek; he smiled broadly in return.
The robot swiveled its camera under Dern’s command, and Adikor saw that the problem was more difficult than Jasmel had thought. Yes, the cable was protruding from a hole—but that hole was nowhere near any part of the cavern’s rocky walls. Rather, it was in the middle of the air, several body-lengths above the ground, and at least that far from the closest wall. There was nothing to lean the ladder against.
“Could he climb the cable?” asked Adikor.
Dern shrugged. “He outweighs the robot, I’m sure. It might hold him, but …”
But if it snapped, Ponter would crash down to the rock floor, possibly breaking his back.
“Can we get a stronger cable through to him?” asked Jasmel.
“If we had a stronger cable,” said Dern, nodding. “But I’ve no idea where to get one down here; I’d have to go up to my workshop on the surface, and that’d take too long.”
But the Gliksins, puny though they might be, were resourceful. Four of them were now holding the base of the ladder, steadying it with all their strength. It wasn’t leaning against anything, but they were shouting at Ponter, presumably urging him to try climbing it anyway.
Ponter ran over to the ladder, and was about to step onto the first rung, even though it was still none too steady. Suddenly, the yellow-haired woman ran up to him, and touched his arm. He turned, and his eyebrow rolled up his browridge in surprise. She pressed something into his other hand and stretched up to place her face against Ponter’s cheek again. He smiled once more, then began climbing the ladder the Gliksins were holding on to.
The ladder swung more and more the higher Ponter got, and Adikor’s heart jumped as it looked like it was going to come crashing down, but more Gliksins rushed to help, and the ladder was straightened again, and Ponter started reaching out with his hand, trying to grab the cable just shy of where it protruded from the midair hole. The ladder swung back, forth, left, right, and Ponter grabbed, missed, grabbed again, missed once more, and then—
Dern’s control box jerked forward slightly. Ponter had the cable!
Adikor, Jasmel, and Dern rushed down onto the computing floor. Jasmel and Dern had taken positions directly in front of the opening, and Adikor, looking to see if there was something he could do to help, moved behind the opening, and—
Adikor gasped.
He saw Ponter’s head appear from nowhere, and, from this rear angle, Adikor could see into his neck as if it had been chopped clean through by some massive blade. Dern and Jasmel were helping pull Ponter in now, but Adikor watched, stunned, as more and more of his beloved emerged through the widening hole that hugged his contours—and as the slice through him worked its way down his body, now revealing cross sections through his shoulders; now through his chest with beating heart and inflating lungs; now through his guts; now through his legs; and—
And he was through! All of him was through!
Adikor rushed around to Ponter and hugged him close, and Jasmel hugged her father, too. The three of them laughed and cried, and, finally, disengaging himself, Adikor said, “Welcome back! Welcome back!”
“Thank you,” said Ponter, smiling broadly.
Dern had politely moved a short distance away. Adikor caught sight of him. “Forgive us,” he said. “Ponter Boddit, this is Dern Kord, an engineer who has been helping us.”
“Healthy day,” said Ponter to Dern. Ponter began walking toward him, and—
“No!” shouted Dern.
But it was too late. Ponter had walked into the taut cable, and it had snapped in two, and the part that projected into the Gliksin world reeled out through the gateway, and the gateway disappeared with an electric blue flash.
The two worlds were separate once more.
Chapter 46
Dern, clearly feeling like a travel cube without a passenger, politely left, heading back up to the surface, letting the family reunion occur in private. Ponter, Adikor, and Jasmel had moved to the small eating room in the quantum-computing lab.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” said Ponter, beaming at Adikor, then at Jasmel. “Either of you.”
“We thought the same thing,” said Adikor.
“You’re fine?” asked Ponter. “Everyone is fine?”
“Yes, I’m all right,” said Adikor.
“And Megameg? How is darling little Megameg?”
“She’s fine,” said Jasmel. “She really hasn’t understood everything that’s been going on.”
“I can’t wait to see her,” said Ponter. “I don’t care if it is seventeen days until Two next become One, I’m going to go into the Center tomorrow and give her a great big hug.”
Jasmel smiled. “She’d like that, Daddy.”
“What about Pabo?”
Adikor grinned. “She missed you awfully. She keeps looking up at every sound, hoping it might be you returning.”
“That sweet bag of bones,” said Ponter.
“Say, Daddy,” said Jasmel, “what was it that female gave you?”
“Oh,” said Ponter. “I haven’t even looked myself. Let’s see …”
Ponter reached into the pocket of his strange, alien pant, and pulled out a wad of white tissue. He carefully opened it up. Inside was a gold chain, and attached to it were two simple, perpendicular bars of unequal length, intersecting each other about one-third of the way down the longer of the two pieces.
“It’s beautiful!” said Jasmel. “What is it?”
Ponter’s eyebrow went up. “It’s the symbol of a belief system some of them subscribe to.”
“Who was that female?” asked Adikor.
“My friend,” said Ponter softly. “Her name—well, I can only say the first syllable of her name: ‘Mare.’”
Adikor laughed; “mare” was, of course, the word in their language for “beloved.”
“I know I told you to find yourself a new woman,” he said, his tone joking, “but I didn’t think you’d have to go that far to meet one who would put up with you.”
Ponter smiled, but it was a forced smile. “She was very kind,” he said.
Adikor knew his partner well enough to understand that whatever story there was to tell would come out in its own good time. Still …
“Speaking of women,” said Adikor. “I, ah, have had some dealings with Klast’s woman-mate while you’ve been away.”
“Daklar!” said Ponter. “How is she?”
“Actually,” said Adikor, looking now at Jasmel, “she’s become rather famous in your absence.”
“Really?” said Ponter. “Whatever for?”
“For making and pursuing a murder accusation.”
“Murder!” exclaimed Ponter. “Who was killed?”
“You were,” said Adikor, deadpan.
Ponter’s jaw dropped.
“You went missing, you see,” said Adikor, “and Bolbay thought …”
“She thought you had murdered me?” declared Ponter incredulously.
“Well,” said Adikor, “you had disappeared, and the mine here is so deep within the rocks that the alibi-archive pavilion couldn’t pick up the signals from our Companions. Bolbay made it sound like the perfect crime.”