Mary shrugged again. “Or he might just have been crazy.”
“You let crazy people possess weapons?” asked Ponter.
Mary’s natural Canadian thought was that they were the only ones who wanted them, but she kept that to herself. “That’s actually the best thing to hope for,” she said. “If he was crazy, acting alone, then there’s no special reason to worry about something like this happening again. But if he’s part of some terrorist group…”
Ponter looked down—and, of course, his gaze fell on his bandaged chest. “I had hoped that it would be safe for my daughters to visit this world.”
“I would so much like to meet them,” said Mary.
“What would have happened to this—this Rufus Cole…” Ponter frowned. “Imagine that! A Gliksin name I can say without difficulty, and it belonged to someone who wanted me dead! In any event, what would have happened to this Rufus Cole had he not been killed?”
“A trial,” said Mary. “If he had been found guilty, he would probably have gone to jail.”
Hak bleeped again.
“Umm, a secure institution, where criminals are kept separate from the general population.”
“You say, ‘if he had been found guilty.’ He did shoot me.”
“Yes, but…well, if he were crazy, that would be a defense. He might be found not guilty by reason of insanity.”
Ponter lifted his eyebrow again. “Would it not make more sense to determine if someone is insane before you let them have the gun, rather than after they have used it?”
Mary nodded. “I couldn’t agree with you more. But, nonetheless, there it is.”
“What if…if I had been killed? Or Tukana had? What would have happened to this man then?”
“Here? In the States? He might have been executed.”
The inevitable bleep.
“Put to death. Killed, as punishment for his crime, and as a deterrent to others who might contemplate the same thing.”
Ponter moved his head left and right, his blond-brown hair making a whooshing sound against his pillow. “I would not have wanted that,” he said. “No one deserves a premature death, not even one who would wish it on others.”
“Come on, Ponter,” said Mary, surprising herself with the sharpness of her tone. “Can you really be that…that Christlike? The bloody guy tried to kill you. Are you really worried about what would have happened to him?”
Ponter was quiet for a time. He didn’t say, although Mary knew he could have, that someone had tried to kill him once before; during his first visit, he’d told Mary that his jaw had been shattered in his youth by a furious blow. Rather, he simply lifted his eyebrow and said, “It is moot, in any event. This Rufus Cole is no more.”
But Mary wasn’t ready to let it pass. “When you were hit, all those—all those months ago—the person who did it had not premeditated it, and he was immediately filled with regret; you told me so yourself. But Rufus Cole had clearly planned in advance to kill you. Surely that makes a difference.”
Ponter shifted slightly on the hospital bed. “I will live,” he said. “Beyond that, nothing after the fact could erase the scar I will bear until my dying day.”
Mary shook her head, but she managed a good-humored tone. “Sometimes you’re just too good to be true, Ponter.”
“I have no response for that,” said Ponter.
Mary smiled. “Which just proves my point.”
“But I do have a question.”
“Yes?”
“What will happen now?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary. “The doctor told me a diplomatic pouch was flown here for you from Sudbury. I guess that’s it over there, on the table.”
Ponter rolled his head. “Ah. Would you get it for me, please?”
Mary did so. Ponter opened the pouch and extracted a large thing like an envelope but of Neanderthal design, perfectly square. He opened that up—it unfolded like a flower blooming—and removed a tiny ruby-colored sphere from within it.
“What’s that?” said Mary.
“A memory bead,” replied Ponter. He touched his Companion, and Mary was surprised to see it pop open, revealing an interior compartment with a small cluster of additional control buds and a recessed hole about the diameter of a pencil. “It fits in here,” he said, slipping it into place. “If you will…”
“I’ll go,” said Mary. “I know you need privacy.”
“No, no. Do not leave. But please forgive me for a moment. Hak will play the recording into my cochlear implants.”
Mary nodded, and she saw Ponter tip his head as was his habit when listening to Hak. A giant frown creased his face. After a few more moments, Ponter popped Hak open again and removed the bead.
“What did it say?” asked Mary.
“The High Gray Council wants me to return home at once.”
Mary felt her heart sinking. “Oh…”
“I will not,” said Ponter, simply.
“What? Why?”
“If I went back, they would close the portal between our worlds.”
“Did they say that?”
“Not directly—but I know the Council. My people are aware that we are mortal, Mare—we know there is no afterlife. And so we do not take unnecessary risks. Continued contact with your people is something the Council would think is unnecessary, after what has happened. There were already many who were against reopening the portal, and this will provide new meat for them.”
“Can you do that? Just decide to stay here?”
“I will do it. There may be consequences; I will bear them.”
“Wow,” said Mary, softly.
“As long as I am here, my people will keep the portal open. This will give those, like me, who believe contact should be maintained, time to argue that perspective. If the portal were closed, it would only be a small step to dismantling the quantum computer, and making sure there is no possibility of any further contact at all.”
“Well, in that case, what do you want to do when you get out of the hospital?”
Ponter looked directly at Mary. “Spend more time with you.”
Mary’s heart fluttered again, but in a good way this time, and she smiled. “That would be terrific.” And then a thought struck her. “Next week, I’m going to Washington, to present my Neanderthal-DNA studies at the Paleoanthropology Society meeting. Why don’t you come along for that? You’d be the biggest hit they’ve had since Wolpoff and Tattersall squared off at the Kansas City meeting.”
“This is a gathering of specialists in ancient forms of humanity?” asked Ponter.
“That’s right,” said Mary. “Most of the people who study such things from all over the world will be there. Believe me, they’d love to meet you.”
Ponter frowned, and for a moment Mary was afraid that she had offended him. “How would I get there?”
“I’ll take you,” said Mary. “When do you get out of the hospital?”
“I believe they wish to keep me here for one more day.”
“All right then,” said Mary.
“Will there not be obstacles to us doing this?”
“Oh, yes,” Mary said, smiling. “And I know just the man to make them disappear…”
Chapter Twenty
There was an irony, Ambassador Tukana Prat knew, in this particular man desiring privacy. And yet who could blame him for being a recluse? He was famous around the planet, honored wherever he went. And, indeed, soon the entire world would celebrate the thousandth month since his great invention. He would be expected to make hundreds of public appearances then—assuming, as one always had to when dealing with a person of his age, that he was still alive. He was a member of generation 138, one of fewer than a thousand individuals left in that group—and nobody from any earlier generation still lived.
Tukana had met 138s before, but not recently. It must have been fifty months since she’d last been in the company of one, and never before had she seen someone looking so old.
They say gray hair is a sign of wisdom—but the great man’s hair was completely gone, at least from that famous, incredibly long skull. To be sure, he still had fine, almost transparent hair covering his arms. It was an odd sight: a man ancient and shriveled, with skin mottled gray and brown, but with piercing blue artificial eyes, eyes that consisted of polished metal balls and segmented irises, eyes that glowed from within. Of course, he could have gotten artificial eyes that matched his originals cosmetically, but this man, of all people, had no reason to hide implants. Indeed, Tukana knew that other implants governed the functioning of his heart and kidneys, that artificial bones had replaced major portions of his crumbling skeleton. Besides, she’d heard him quip once during a conversation with an Exhibitionist that when people were as old as he was, it was good for others to see that they had replacement eyes, because then they stopped assuming that you’re too old to see anything.