“Only because he missed,” said Bedros.

“Yes, but—”

“No buts, Ambassador. I’m going to recommend to the Council that we permanently shut the portal as soon as we can get Scholar Boddit back.”

“Please,” said Tukana. “There is an opportunity here that is too valuable to pass up.”

“They have never had a purging of their gene pool,” snapped Bedros. “The most abhorrent, dangerous traits still run rampant throughout their population.”

“I understand that, but nonetheless…”

“And they carry weapons! Not for hunting, but for killing each other. And how many days did it take before such weapons were turned against members of our kind?” Bedros shook his head. “Ponter Boddit told us what happened to our kind on their world—remember, he learned that on his previous trip. They—the Gliksins—exterminated us. Now, think about that, Ambassador Prat. Think about it! Physically, the Gliksins are puny. Weakling stick figures! And yet they managed to wipe us out there, despite our greater strength and our bigger brains. How could they possibly have accomplished that?”

“I have no idea. Besides, Ponter only said that was one theory about what had happened to us in their world.”

“They wiped us out through treachery,” continued Bedros, as if Tukana hadn’t spoken. “Through deceit. Through unimaginable violence. Swarms of them, armed with rocks and spears, must have poured into our valleys, overwhelming us with sheer numbers, until the blood of our kind soaked the ground and every last one of us was dead. That’s their history. That’s their way. It would be madness for us to leave a portal open between our two worlds.”

“The portal is deep within the rocks, and can accommodate only one or two people traveling through it at a time. I really don’t think we have to worry about—”

“I can hear our ancestors saying the same things, half a million months ago. ‘Oh, look! Another kind of humanity! Well, I’m sure we have nothing to worry about. After all, the entrances to our valleys are narrow.’”

“We don’t know for sure that that’s what happened,” said Tukana.

“Why take the risk?” asked Bedros. “Why risk it, for even one more day?”

Tukana Prat shut off the holo-bubble and paced slowly back and forth. “I learned something difficult in that other world,” she said softly. “I learned that, by their standards, I am not much of a diplomat. I speak too succinctly and too plainly. And yes, I will plainly say that there are many unpleasant things about these people. You are right when you call them violent. And the damage they have done to their environment is beyond calculation. But they have greatness in them, too. Ponter is right when he says they will go to the stars.”

“Good riddance to them,” said Bedros.

“Don’t say that. I saw works of art in their world that were astonishingly beautiful. They are different from us, and there are things by character and temperament that they can do that we cannot—wondrous things.”

“But one of them tried to kill you!”

“One, yes. Out of six billion.” Tukana was silent for a moment. “Do you know what the biggest difference between them and us is?”

Bedros looked like he was about to make a sarcastic remark, but thought better of it. “Tell me,” he said.

“They believe there is a purpose to all this.” Tukana spread her arms, encompassing everything around her. “They believe there is a meaning to life.”

“Because they have deluded themselves into thinking the universe has a guiding intelligence.”

“In part, yes. But it goes deeper than that. Even their atheists—the ones among them who don’t believe in their God—search for meaning, for explanations. We exist—but they live. They seek.”

“We seek, too. We engage in science.”

“But we do it out of practicality. We want a better tool, so we study until we can make one. But they preoccupy themselves with what they themselves call big questions: Why are we here? What is all this for? ”

“Those are meaningless questions.”

“Are they?”

“Of course they are!”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Tukana Prat. “But perhaps not. Perhaps they are getting close to answering them, close to a new enlightenment.”

“And then they’ll stop trying to kill each other? Then they’ll stop raping their environment?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. There is goodness in them.”

“There is death in them. The only way we will survive contact with them is if they kill themselves off before they manage to kill us.”

Tukana closed her eyes. “I know you mean well, Councilor Bedros, and—”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not. I understand you have the best interests of our people at heart. But so do I. And my perspective is that of a diplomat.”

“An incompetent diplomat,” snapped Bedros. “Even the Gliksins think so!”

“I—”

“Or do you always kill the natives?”

“Look, Councilor, I am as upset about that as you are, but—”

“Enough!” shouted Bedros. “Enough! We never should have let Boddit push us into doing this in the first place. It’s time for older and wiser heads to prevail.”

Mary stepped quietly into Ponter’s hospital room. The surgeons had had no trouble removing the bullet—postcranial Neanderthal anatomy was close to that of Homo sapiens, after all, and Hak had apparently conversed with them throughout the entire procedure. Ponter had lost enough blood that a transfusion would normally have been in order, but it had seemed best to avoid that until much more was known about Neanderthal hematology. A saline drip was hooked up to Ponter’s arm, and Hak had frequent dialogues with the physicians about Ponter’s condition.

Ponter had been unconscious most of the time since the surgery. Indeed, during it, he’d been given an injection to put him to sleep, using a chemical from his medical belt, as instructed by Hak.

Mary watched Ponter’s broad chest rise and fall. She thought back to the first time she’d seen him, which had also been in a hospital room. Then, she’d looked at him with astonishment. She hadn’t believed a modern Neanderthal was possible.

Now, though, she didn’t look at him as a bizarre specimen, as a freak, as an impossibility. Now, she looked at him with love. And her heart was breaking.

Suddenly, Ponter’s eyes opened. “Mare,” he said, softly.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” Mary said, crossing over to the bed.

“I was already awake,” said Ponter. “Hak had been playing some music for me. And then I smelled you.”

“How are you?” asked Mary, drawing a metal-framed chair up next to the bed.

Ponter pulled back his sheet. His hairy chest was naked, but a large pad of gauze, stained russet with dried blood, was held to his shoulder with white medical tape.

“I am to live,” he said.

“I am so sorry this happened to you,” said Mary.

“How is Tukana?” asked Ponter.

Mary raised her eyebrows, surprised that Ponter had not been informed. “She chased the man who shot you.”

A wan smile touched Ponter’s broad mouth. “I suspect he is in worse shape than she, then.”

“I’ll say,” said Mary softly. “Ponter, she killed him.”

Ponter said nothing for a moment. “We rarely take justice into our own hands.”

“I listened to them arguing about that on TV while you were in surgery,” Mary said. “Most are of the opinion that it was self-defense.”

“How did she kill him?”

Mary shrugged a bit, acknowledging there was no nice way to say this. “She smashed his head into the pavement, and it…it burst open.”

Ponter was quiet for a time. “Oh,” he said at last. “What will happen to her?”

Mary frowned. She’d once read a courtroom drama that The Globe and Mail had raved about in which an extraterrestrial was put on trial in L.A., charged with murdering a human. But there was one key difference here…