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.