And partly it was because the Neanderthals used clean solar power for most of their energy needs, rendering their skies far less polluted than the ones here.
Mary had made it to her current age of thirty-eight before seeing the aurora, and she didn’t anticipate any reason to come back to Northern Ontario, so tonight, she knew, might well be the last time she’d ever see the undulating northern lights.
She drank in the view.
Some things were the same on both versions of Earth, Ponter had said: the gross details of the geography, most of the animal and plant species (although the Neanderthals, never having indulged in over killing, still had mammoths and moas in their world), the broad strokes of the climate. But Mary was a scientist: she understood all about chaos theory, about how the beating of a butterfly’s wing was enough to affect weather systems half a world away. Surely just because there was a clear sky here on this Earth didn’t mean the same was true on Ponter’s world.
But if the weather did happen to coincide, perhaps Ponter was also looking up at the night sky now.
And perhaps he was thinking of Mary.
Ponter would, of course, be seeing precisely the same constellations, even if he gave them different names—nothing terrestrial could possibly have disturbed the distant stars. But would the auroras be the same? Did butterflies or people have any effect on the choreography of the northern lights? Perhaps she and Ponter were looking at the exact same spectacle—a curtain of illumination waving back and forth, the seven bright stars of the Big Dipper (or, as he would call it, the Head of the Mammoth) stretching out above.
Why, he might even right now be seeing the same shimmying to the right, the same shimmying to the left, the same—
Jesus.
Mary felt her jaw drop.
The auroral curtain was splitting down the middle, like aquamarine tissue paper being torn by an invisible hand. The fissure grew longer, wider, starting at the top and moving toward the horizon. Mary had seen nothing like that on the first night she’d looked up at the northern lights.
The sheet finally separated into two halves, parting like the Red Sea before Moses. A few—they looked like sparks, but could they really be that?—arced between the halves, briefly bridging the gap. And then the half on the right seemed to roll up from the bottom, like a window blind being wound onto its dowel, and, as it did so, it changed colors, now green, now blue, now violet, now orange, now turquoise.
And then in a flash—a spectral burst of light—that part of the aurora disappeared.
The remaining sheet of light was swirling now, as if it were being sucked down a drain in the firmament. As it spun more and more rapidly, it flung off gouts of cool green fire, a pinwheel against the night.
Mary watched, transfixed. Even if this was only her second night actually observing the aurora, she’d seen countless pictures of the northern lights over the years in books and magazines. She’d known those still images hadn’t done justice to the spectacle; she’d read how the aurora rippled and fluttered.
But nothing had prepared her for this.
The vortex continued to contract, growing brighter as it did so, until finally, with—did she really hear it?—with what sounded like a pop, it vanished.
Mary staggered backward, bumping up against the cold metal of her rented Dodge Neon. She was suddenly aware that the forest sounds around her—insects and frogs, owls and bats—had fallen silent, as if every living thing was looking up in wonder.
Mary’s heart was pounding, and one thought kept echoing through her head as she climbed into the safety of her car.
I wonder if it’s supposed to do that…
Chapter Two
Jurard Selgan rose from his saddle-seat and paced around the circumference of his circular office while Ponter Boddit told of his first trip to the Gliksin world.
“So your relationship with Mare Vaughan had ended on an unsatisfactory note?” said Selgan, at last returning to his seat.
Ponter nodded.
“Relationships are often unresolved,” said Selgan. “It would be nice if that weren’t the case, but surely this can’t have been the first time a relationship you were involved in had ended in a disappointing way.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Ponter, very softly.
“You’re thinking of a specific person, aren’t you?” said Selgan. “Tell me.”
“My woman-mate, Klast Harbin,” said Ponter.
“Ah. Your relationship with her ended, did it? Who initiated the split?”
“No one initiated it,” snapped Ponter. “Klast died, twenty months ago.”
“Oh,” said Selgan. “My condolences. Was she—was she an older woman?”
“No. She was a 145, same as me.”
Selgan rolled his eyebrow up his browridge. “Was it an accident?”
“It was cancer of the blood.”
“Ah,” said Selgan. “A tragedy. But…”
“Don’t say it, Selgan.” Ponter’s tone was sharp.
“Don’t say what?” asked the personality sculptor.
“What you were about to say.”
“And you think that was…?”
“That my relationship with Klast was cut off abruptly, just like my relationship with Mare was cut off abruptly.”
“Is that the way you feel?” asked Selgan.
“I knew I shouldn’t have come here,” said Ponter. “You personality sculptors think your insights are so profound. But they’re not; they’re simplistic. ‘Relationship Green ended abruptly, and you are reminded of it by the way Relationship Red ended.’” Ponter snorted dismissively.
Selgan was quiet for several beats, perhaps waiting to see if Ponter would say more of his own volition. When it became clear that he would not, Selgan spoke again. “But you did push for the portal between this world and Mare’s world to be reopened.” He let the sentence hang in the air between them for a time, and Ponter finally responded.
“And you think that’s why I pushed?” Ponter said. “That I didn’t care about the consequences, the ramifications, for this world? That all I was worried about was getting to resolve this unfinished relationship?”
“You tell me,” said Selgan, gently.
“It wasn’t like that. Oh, sure, there’s a superficial resemblance between what happened with me and Klast, and what happened with me and Mare. But I’m a scientist.” He fixed Selgan with an angry stare of his golden eyes. “A real scientist. I understand when true symmetry exists—it doesn’t here—and I understand false analogy.”
“But you did push the High Gray Council. I saw it on my Voyeur, along with thousands of others.”
“Well, yes, but…”
“But what? What were you thinking then? What were you trying to accomplish?”
“Nothing—except what was best for all our people.”
“Are you sure of that?” asked Selgan.
“Of course I’m sure!” snapped Ponter.
Selgan was quiet, letting Ponter listen to his own words echo off the polished wooden wall.
Ponter Boddit had to admit that nothing he’d ever experienced—indeed, probably nothing that any of his people had ever experienced—had been more frightening than being transported bodily from this world to that bizarre other world, arriving in total darkness and almost drowning in a giant water tank.
But, still, of the things that happened in this world, this universe, few could compare for sheer terror with addressing the High Gray Council. After all, this wasn’t just the local Gray Council; the High Gray Council ran the planet, and its members had come here, to Saldak, specifically to see Ponter and Adikor and the quantum computer they’d used twice now to open a portal to another reality.