Louise, switching to English, sounded as though she couldn’t believe Mary’s response. “You’ve been crying.”

Mary absently lifted a hand to her cheek and drew it away. She felt her eyebrows go up in astonishment. “Oh,” she said softly, not knowing what else to fill the quiet with.

“What’s wrong?” asked Louise again.

Mary took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Louise was the closest thing she had to a friend here in the United States. And Keisha, the rape-crisis counselor she’d spoken to in Sudbury, seemed light-years away. But…

But no. She didn’t want to talk about it; didn’t want to give voice to her pain.

Or her guilt.

Still, she had to say something. “It’s nothing,” Mary said at last. “It’s just…” She found a box of Wegman’s tissues on her desk and wiped her cheeks. “It’s just men, ” she said.

Louise nodded sagely, as if Mary was talking about some—what would she call it? Some affaire de coeur that had gone wrong. Louise, Mary suspected, had had a lot of boyfriends over the years. “Men,” agreed Louise, rolling her brown eyes. “You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.”

Mary was about to nod agreement, but, well, she had heard that on Ponter’s world what Louise had just said wasn’t true. And, Christ, Mary wasn’t some schoolgirl—not that Louise was, either. “They’re responsible for so many of the world’s problems,” said Mary.

Louise nodded at this, too, and seemed to pick up the change of emphasis. “Well, it certainly isn’t women behind most terrorist attacks.”

Mary had to agree with Louise about that, but…“But it’s not just men in foreign countries. It’s men here—in the U.S., and in Canada.”

Louise’s brow knitted in concern. “What happened?” she asked.

And, finally, Mary answered, at least in part. “I got a phone call from someone at York University. She said there’d been a rape on the campus.”

“Oh my God,” said Louise. “Anybody you know?”

Mary shook her head, although in fact she realized that she didn’t know the answer to that. God, she thought, what if it had been someone she knew—someone who had been one of her students?

“No,” said Mary, as if her headshake had been insufficient to convey her meaning. “But it depressed me.” She looked at Louise—so young, so pretty—then dropped her gaze. “It’s such a terrible crime.”

Louise nodded, and it was that same worldly, sage nod she’d given earlier as if—Mary felt a constriction in her stomach—as if, perhaps, Louise really did know whereof Mary was speaking. But Mary couldn’t explore that further without revealing her own history, and she wasn’t ready to do that—at least not yet. “Men can be so awful,” said Mary. It sounded ditzy, Bridget-Jonesish, but it was true.

God damn it to hell, it was true.

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.