Ponter shook his head. “That belief is what caused this to happen. The only way to honor the dead is by ensuring that no more enter that state prematurely.”

Mary sounded angry. “All right, then. Go tell them.”

Ponter turned and looked at the Gliksins and their ebony reflections in the wall. His people almost never took human lives, and Mary’s people did it on such large scales, with such frequency. Surely this belief in God and an afterlife had to be linked to their readiness to kill.

He took a step forward, but…

But, right now, these people did not look vicious, did not look bloodthirsty, did not look ready to kill. Right now, they looked sad, so incredibly sad.

Mary was still upset with him. “Go on,” she said, gesturing with a hand. “What’s the holdup? Go tell them.”

Ponter thought about how sad he himself had been when Klast had died. And yet…

And yet, these people—these strange, strange Gliksins—were taking some comfort from their beliefs. He stared at the individuals by the wall, kept away from him by armed agents. No, no, he would not tell these mourners that their loved ones were truly gone. After all, it wasn’t these sad people who had sent them off to die.

Ponter turned toward Mary. “I understand the belief provides comfort, but…” He shook his head. “But how do you break out of the cycle? God making killing palatable, God providing comfort after the killing is done. How do you keep from repeating it over and over again?”

“I have no idea,” said Mary.

“You must do something,” Ponter said.

“I do,” said Mary. “I pray.”

Ponter looked at her, looked back at the mourners, then turned once more to Mary, and he let his head hang, staring down at the ground in front of him, unable to face her or the thousands of names. “If I thought there was the slightest possibility it would work,” he said softly, “I would join you.”

“Fascinating,” said Jurard Selgan. “Fascinating.”

“What?” Ponter’s voice was tinged with irritation.

“Your behavior, while at the memorial wall commemorating those Gliksins who had died in southeast Galasoy.”

“What about it?” said Ponter. His voice was sharp, like that of someone trying to talk while a scab was being picked off.

“Well, this was not the first time your beliefs—our beliefs, as Barasts—had been in conflict with those of the Gliksins, was it?”

“No, of course not.”

“Indeed,” said Selgan, “such conflicts must have come up on your first visit there, no?”

“I guess.”

“Can you give me an example?” asked Selgan.

Ponter folded his arms in front of his chest. “All right,” he said, in a smug, I’ll-show-you tone. “I mentioned this to you right at the beginning: the Gliksins have this silly notion that the universe has only existed for a finite time. They’ve completely misconstrued the redshift evidence, thinking it indicates an expanding universe; they don’t understand that mass varies over time. Further, they think the cosmic microwave background radiation is the lingering echo of what they call ‘the big bang’—a vast explosion they believe started the universe.”

“They seem to like things blowing up,” said Selgan.

“They certainly do. But, of course, the uniformity of the background radiation is really caused by repeated absorption and emission of electrons trapped in plasma-pinching magnetic-vortex filaments.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” said Selgan, conceding that this wasn’t his territory of expertise.

“I am right,” replied Ponter. “But I didn’t fight with them over that issue. During my first visit, Mare said to me, ‘I don’t think you’re going to convince many people that the big bang didn’t happen.’ And I told her that was fine; I said: ‘Feeling a need to convince others that you’re right is something that comes from religion; I’m simply content to know that I am right, even if others don’t know it.’”

“Ah,” said Selgan. “And do you really feel that way?”

“Yes. To the Gliksins, knowledge is a battle! A territorial war! Why, to have their equivalent of the title ‘Scholar’ conferred upon you, you have to defend a thesis. That’s the word they use: defend! But science isn’t about defending one’s position against all comers; it’s about flexibility and open-mindedness and valuing the truth, no matter who finds it.”

“I concur,” said Selgan. He paused for a moment, then: “But you didn’t spend much time looking for any evidence as to whether the Gliksins might have been right in their belief in an afterlife.”

“That’s not true. I gave Mary every opportunity to demonstrate the validity of that claim.”

“Before this encounter at the memorial wall, you mean?”

“Yes. But she had nothing!”

“And so, as in the case of their finite cosmology, you let the matter go, content to know that you were right?”

“Yes. Well, I mean…”

Selgan raised his eyebrow. “Yes?”

“I mean, all right, sure, I argued with her about this belief in an afterlife. But that was different.”

“Different from the cosmological question? Why?”

“Because so much more was at stake.”

“Doesn’t the cosmological question deal with the ultimate fate of the entire universe?”

“I mean, it wasn’t just an abstract issue. It was—it is—the heart of everything.”

“Why?”

“Because…because—gristle, I don’t know why. It just seems terribly important. It’s what lets them fight all those wars, after all.”

“I understand. But I also understand that it is fundamental to their beliefs; it was something that surely you must have realized they weren’t going to give up easily.”

“I suppose.”

“And yet, you continued to press the point.”

“Well, yes.”

“Why?”

Ponter shrugged.

“Would you like to hear my guess?” asked Selgan.

Ponter shrugged again.

“You were pushing this issue because you wanted to see if there was some proof of this afterlife. Perhaps Mare, and the other Gliksins, had been holding out on you. Perhaps there was evidence that she would reveal if you kept pushing.”

“There cannot be evidence for that which does not exist,” said Ponter.

“Granted,” said Selgan. “But either you were trying to convince them that you were right—or you were trying to force them to convince you that they were right.”

Ponter shook his head. “It was pointless,” he said. “It is a ridiculous belief, this notion of souls.”

“Souls?” said Selgan.

“The immaterial part of one’s essence that they believe is immortal.”

“Ah. And you say this is a ridiculous belief?”

“Of course.”

“But surely they are entitled to hold it, no?”

“I guess.”

“Just as they are entitled to their bizarre cosmological model, no?”

“I suppose.”

“And yet, you couldn’t let this question of an afterlife go, could you? Even once you’d left the memorial wall, you still tried to push this point, didn’t you?”

Ponter looked away.

With the crisis over the closing of the portal at least temporarily averted—there was no way the Neanderthals would shut it down now with a dozen of their most valuable citizens on this side—Jock Krieger decided to return to the research he’d been doing earlier.

He left Seabreeze, driving his black BMW to the River Campus of the University of Rochester; the river in question was the Genesee. When he’d been setting up Synergy, a couple of phone calls from the right people was all it had taken to get his entire staff full priority access to the UR Library holdings. Jock parked his car in the Wilmot Lot, and headed into the brown brick Carlson Science & Engineering Library—named for Chester F. Carlson, the inventor of xerography. Journals, Jock knew, were on the first floor. He showed his university VIP ID to the librarian, a pudgy black woman with her hair in a red kerchief. He told her what he needed, and she waddled off into the back. Jock, never one to waste time, pulled out his PDA and scanned articles from that day’s New York Times and Washington Post.