Ponter lifted his massive shoulders, but they moved slowly, ponderously, as if he were shifting the weight of his world with them. “But we believe in zero population growth. Klast and I have two children already; they are our replacements.”

“But Adikor and Lurt have only one child,” said Mary.

“Dab, yes. But they may try again next year.”

“Are they going to do that? Have you discussed it with Adikor?” Mary did not like the desperation that had come into her tone.

“No, I have not,” said Ponter. “I suppose I could broach the topic, but even if they are not going to try again, the Gray Council—”

“Damn it, Ponter, I’m sick of the Gray Council! I’m sick of all these rules and regulations! I’m sick of a bunch of old people controlling your life.”

Ponter looked at Mary, his eyebrow lifted again in surprise. “They are elected, you know. The rules they enact are the rules my people have chosen for themselves.”

Mary took a deep breath. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just—it’s just that it shouldn’t matter to anyone but you or me if we have a baby.”

“You are correct,” said Ponter. “As is, some people in my world have more than two children. Twins are not uncommon; my nearest neighbor has twin sons. And, often enough, there will be three conceptions by a woman: one when she is nineteen years old, another when she is twenty-nine, and sometimes again when she is thirty-nine.”

“I’m thirty-nine. Why can’t we try?”

“There will be those who will say such a child would be unnatural,” replied Ponter.

Mary looked around. She moved over to one of the couches growing out of the wall, and patted the spot next to her, inviting Ponter to join her. He did.

“Where I come from,” said Mary, “many people say that two men having—what did Louise call it back at Reuben’s place? ‘Affectionate touching of the genitals’? There are those among my species who say that that is unnatural, and that relations between two women are unnatural, too.” Mary’s face was firm. “But they’re wrong. I don’t know if I would have said that with such assurance before first coming to your world, but I know it now.” She nodded, as much to herself as to Ponter. “The world—any world—is a better place when people are in love, when people care about other people, and, as long as those people are consenting adults, it’s nobody’s business except their own who they are. A male and a female, or two males, or two females—they’re all natural, as long as they’re in love. And a Gliksin and a Barast—that’s natural, too, if they’re in love.”

“And we are in love,” said Ponter, taking Mary’s small hand in his two massive ones. “But, still, there are people in your world and mine who will object to our having a child.”

Mary nodded sadly. “I know, yes.” She let air escape from her lungs in a long, rueful sigh. “You know Reuben is black.”

“More of a medium brown, I would say,” replied Ponter, smiling. “A rather nice shade.”

But Mary was in no mood for jokes. “And Louise Benoît is white. There are still people in my world who object to a black man and a white woman having a relationship. But they are wrong, wrong, wrong. Just as those who might object to us being together—or having a child together—are wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“I agree, of course, but—”

“But what? Nothing could be a better symbol of the synergy between our worlds—and of our love for each other—than us having a baby together.”

Ponter looked into Mary’s eyes, his golden orbs dancing with excitement. “You are right, my love. You are absolutely right.”

Every week, Jock Krieger reviewed the press coverage of the Neanderthals, both in the hundred and forty magazines Synergy subscribed to and as collected and forwarded by various print, radio, and video clipping services. The current batch of material included a preprint of an interview with Lonwis Trob coming up in Popular Mechanics; a five-part series from the San Francisco Chronicle on what Neanderthal technology was doing to the future of Silicon Valley firms; an appearance by runner Jalsk Lalplun on ABC’s Wide World of Sports; an editorial from the Minneapolis Star Tribune saying Tukana Prat should win the Nobel Peace Prize for finding a way to keep contact between the two worlds open; a CNN special with Craig Ventner interviewing Borl Kadas, who headed the Neanderthal version of the Human Genome Project; an NHK documentary on Neanderthals in fact and fiction; a DVD re-release of Quest for Fire with an audio commentary track by a Neanderthal paleoanthropologist; a new Department of Defense study of security issues related to interdimensional portals; and more.

Louise Benoît had come down to the living room of the old mansion that housed the Synergy Group to have a look through the materials, as well. She was reading an article in New Scientist that questioned why Neanderthals had ever domesticated dogs given that their own sense of smell was at least as good as that possessed by canines, meaning dogs would have added little to their ability to hunt. But she was interrupted when Jock blew out air noisily.

“What’s wrong?” asked Louise, looking over the magazine at him.

“I get sick of this,” Jock said, indicating the pile of magazines, newspaper clippings, audio tapes, and VHS cassettes. “I get sick to death of it. ‘The Neanderthals are more peaceful than we are.’ ‘The Neanderthals are more environmentally conscious than we are.’ ‘The Neanderthals are more enlightened than we are.’ Why the hell should that be?”

“You really want to know?” asked Louise, smiling. She rummaged in the pile of magazines, then plucked out the current Maclean’s. “Did you read the guest editorial in here?”

“Not yet.”

“It says that the Neanderthals are like Canadians, and the Gliksins are like Americans.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Well, the writer says the Neanderthals believe in everything that Canada stands for: socialism, pacifism, environmentalism, humanism.”

“Good grief,” said Jock.

“Oh, come on,” said Louise, her tone teasing. “I overheard you talking to Kevin: you agreed with Pat Buchanan when he said my country should be called ‘Soviet Canuckistan.’ ”

“Canadians are Gliksins, too, Dr. Benoît.”

“Not all of them,” Louise said, still teasing. “After all, Ponter is a Canadian citizen.”

“I hardly think that’s the reason they keep coming off so well in the press. It’s that bloody left-wing journalistic bias.”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Louise, setting down her magazine. “The real reason the Neanderthals keep coming off better than us is that they’ve got bigger brains. Neanderthal cranial capacities are ten percent greater than our own. We’ve got just barely enough brains to think through the first stage of ideas: if we build a better spear, we can kill more animals. But, unless we make a real effort, we don’t see ahead to stage two: if we kill too many animals, there won’t be any left, and we’ll starve. The Neanderthals, it seems, grasped the big picture from day one.”

“Then why did we defeat them here, in the past of this Earth?”

“Because we had consciousness—true self-awareness—and they did not. Remember my theory: the universe split into two when consciousness first emerged. In one branch, we, and only we, had it. In the other, they, and only they, had it. Is it any wonder that, regardless of brain size or physical robustness, it was the truly conscious beings who prevailed in their respective timelines? But now we’re comparing conscious beings with 1400 cc’s of brain to those with over 1500.” She smiled. “We’ve been waiting for the big-brained aliens to show up, and now they have. But they didn’t come from Alpha Centauri; they came from right next door.”