The plane, according to an announcement over the speakers, had to divert to the south and fly directly over the island known as Manhattan, to accommodate other air traffic. Crowded skies, thought Ponter. How astonishing! Still, Ponter was delighted. After having his fill of hearing about war last night, he’d turned to the encyclopedia’s entry on New York City. There were, he discovered, many great human-made landmarks here, and it would be wonderful to get to see them from the air. He looked for, and found, the giant green woman with the dour expression, holding aloft a torch. But, try as he might, he couldn’t spot the two towers that supposedly rose above the surrounding buildings, each an incredible hundred and ten stories tall.

When they were at last on the ground, Ponter asked Hélène about the missing—he found the word poetic—“skyscrapers.”

Hélène looked very uncomfortable. “Ah,” she said. “You mean the World Trade Center towers. Used to be two of the tallest buildings on the planet, but…” Her voice cracked slightly, which surprised Ponter. “I—I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but…” Another hesitation. “But they were destroyed by terrorists.”

Ponter’s Companion bleeped, but Tukana, who had clearly been doing research of her own, tipped her head toward Ponter. “Gliksin outlaws who use violence to try to force political or social change.”

Ponter shook his head, once more astonished by the universe he’d come to. “How were the buildings destroyed?”

Hélène hesitated yet again before responding. “Two large airplanes with tanks full of fuel were hijacked and deliberately crashed into them.”

Ponter could think of no reply. But he was glad he hadn’t learned this until he was safely back on the ground.

When she had been eighteen, Mary’s boyfriend Donny had gone to Los Angeles with his family for the summer. That had been before widespread e-mail or even cheap long-distance calling, but they’d kept in touch by letter. Don had sent long, densely packed ones at first, full of news and declarations of how much he missed her, how much he loved her.

But as the pleasant days of June gave way to the heat of July, and the sweltering humidity of August, the letters grew less frequent, and less densely packed. Mary remembered vividly the day one arrived with just Don’s name at the end, standing there alone, not preceded by the word “Love.”

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Perhaps it does in some cases. Perhaps, indeed, it had in the current case. It had been weeks since Mary had last seen Ponter Boddit, and she felt at least as much, if not more, affection for him than she had when he departed.

But there was a difference. After Ponter had left, Mary had gone back to being alone—not even a free woman, for she and Colm were only separated; divorce meant excommunication for both of them, and the process of pursuing an annulment had seemed hypocritical.

But Ponter had only been alone when he was here. Yes, he was a widower, although that wasn’t the term he used for it, but when he’d gone back to his universe, he’d been surrounded by family: his man-mate Adikor Huld—Mary had committed the names to memory—and his two daughters, eighteen-year-old Jasmel Ket and eight-year-old Megameg Bek.

Mary was in an anteroom on the eighteenth floor of the Secretariat building at the UN, waiting for Ponter to get out of a meeting, so she could at last rendezvous with him. As she sat in a chair, too nervous to read, her stomach churned, and all sorts of thoughts went through her head. Would Ponter even recognize her? He must have seen plenty of late-thirties blondes here in New York; would all similarly colored Gliksins look alike to him? Besides, she’d cut her hair since Sudbury, and, if anything, was a pound or two heavier, God damn it.

And, after all, it had been she who had rejected him last time. Perhaps she was the last person Ponter wanted to see, now that he had returned to this Earth.

But no. No. He had understood that she was still dealing with the aftermath of the rape, that her inability to respond to his advance had nothing to do with him. Yes, surely, he had understood that.

And yet, there was—

Mary’s heart jumped. The door was opening, and the muffled voices within suddenly became distinct. Mary leapt to her feet, her hands clasped nervously in front of her.

“—and I’ll get you those figures,” said an Asian diplomat, talking over his shoulder to a silver-haired female Neanderthal who must be Ambassador Tukana Prat.

Two more H. sap diplomats shouldered through the door, and then—

And then, there was Ponter Boddit, his dark blond hair parted precisely in the center, his arresting golden brown eyes obvious even at this distance. Mary lifted her eyebrows, but Ponter hadn’t caught sight, or wind, of her just yet. He was speaking to one of the other diplomats, saying something about geological surveys, and—

And then his eyes did fall on Mary, and she smiled nervously, and he did a neat little sideways step, bypassing the people in front of him, and his face split into that foot-wide grin Mary knew so well, and he closed the distance between him and her, and swept her into his arms, hugging her close to his massive chest.

“Mare!” exclaimed Ponter, in his own voice, and then, with Hak translating, “How wonderful to see you!”

“Welcome back,” said Mary, her cheek against his. “Welcome back!”

“What are you doing here in New York?” asked Ponter.

Mary could have said that she’d just come in hopes of collecting a DNA sample from Tukana; it was part of the truth, and it afforded an easy out, a face-saving explanation, but…

“I came to see you,” she said simply.

Ponter squeezed her again, then relaxed his grip and stepped back, putting a hand on each of her shoulders, looking her in the face. “I am so glad,” he said.

Mary became uncomfortably aware that the other people in the room were looking at her and Ponter, and, indeed, after a moment, Tukana cleared her throat, just as a Gliksin might.

Ponter turned his head and looked at the ambassador. “Oh,” he said. “Forgive me. This is Mare Vaughan, the geneticist I told you about.”

Mary stepped forward, extending her hand. “Hello, Madam Ambassador.”

Tukana took Mary’s hand and shook it with astonishing strength. Mary reflected that if she’d been sufficiently sneaky, she could have collected a few of Tukana’s cells just in the process of shaking hands. “It is a pleasure to meet you,” said the older Neanderthal. “I am Tukana Prat.”

“Yes, I know,” said Mary, smiling. “I’ve been reading about you in the papers.”

“My feeling,” said Tukana, a sly grin on her wide face, “is that perhaps you and Envoy Boddit would like some time alone together.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned to one of the Gliksin diplomats. “Shall we go to your office and look over those population-dispersal figures?”

The diplomat nodded, and the rest of the party left the room, leaving Mary and Ponter alone.

“So,” said Ponter, sweeping Mary into another hug. “How are you?”

Mary couldn’t tell if it was her heart, or Ponter’s, that was jack hammering. “Now that you’re here,” she said, “I’m fine.”

The General Assembly hall of the United Nations consisted of a series of concentric semicircles facing a central stage. Ponter was baffled at the mix of faces he saw. In Canada, he’d noted a range of skin colors and facial types, and, so far, his experience of the United States had been similar. Here, in this massive chamber, he saw the same wide variety of coloration, which Lurt had told him almost certainly had resulted from prolonged periods of geographic isolation for each color group, assuming, as Mare had asserted, that they were indeed cross fertile.