“Probably for the same reason: to give the offspring the best chance to grow before having to face winter.”

But the simile had stuck in Mary’s mind, and she ventured forward tentatively. “You Barasts are like sheep in other ways, too. You’re so peaceful.”

“Does it seem that way?” said Bandra.

“You don’t have wars. And from what I’ve seen, you don’t have much societal violence. Although…” She stopped herself, before she mentioned the shattering of Ponter’s jaw, an unfortunate event from years ago.

“I suppose. We still hunt our own food—not all the time, of course, unless that happens to be one’s particular contribution. But often enough that it provides an outlet for violent impulses. How do you say it? It gets it out of our systems.”

“Catharsis,” said Mary. “A purging of pent-up feeling.”

“Catharsis! Oooh, another great word! Yes, indeed: smash in a few animal skulls, or tear flesh from bone, and you feel wonderfully peaceful afterward.”

Mary stopped to think if she’d ever killed an animal, for food or any other purpose. Except for swatting mosquitoes, the answer was no. “We don’t do that.”

“I know,” said Bandra. “You consider it uncivilized. But we consider it to be part of what makes civilization possible.”

“Still, your lack of privacy—doesn’t it give rise to abuses? Couldn’t someone be clandestinely—secretly—watching what you’re doing, by compromising the security of the alibi archives?”

“Why would anyone want to do that?”

“Well, to prevent an overthrow of the government, say.”

“Why would someone want to overthrow the government? Why not just vote it out of office?”

“Well, today, yes. But surely you haven’t had democracy since the dawn of time?”

“What else might we have had?”

“Tribal chieftains? Warlords? God-emperors? No, scratch that last one. But, well…” Mary frowned. Well, what? Without agriculture, there were no small-scale defensible territories. Oh, primitive farmers could doubtless defend a few hundred acres, but the tens or hundreds of square miles that represented a hunting forest were beyond the abilities of small groups to protect.

And, indeed, why bother defending them? A raid on farmlands produced immediate results: plant food and fiber, stolen from the field or taken from the granary. But, as Ponter had pointed out time and again, hunting and gathering were based on knowledge: no one could just enter a new territory and profitably exploit it. They wouldn’t know where the animals came to drink, where the birds laid their eggs, where the most bountiful fruit trees grew. No, such a lifestyle would engender peaceful trade, since it was far less work for a traveler to bring something of value along to swap for freshly captured game rather than to try to hunt the game himself.

Nonetheless, if push came to shove, most Neanderthals were probably robust enough to forage for themselves—just as apparently this Vissan was now doing. Besides, with a cap on population size—and the Neanderthals had had that for hundreds of years—there was plenty of unused territory for anyone who wished to strike out on their own.

“Still,” said Mary, “there must have been times when people didn’t like their elected officials, and wanted to get rid of them.”

“Oh, yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.”

“What happened then?”

“In the old days? Before the purging of our gene pool? Assassination.”

“Well, there!” said Mary. “That’s a reason for compromising other people’s privacy: to thwart assassination attempts. If someone was plotting to assassinate you, you’d want to keep an eye on them, to prevent them from pulling it off.”

“An assassination doesn’t require any plotting,” said Bandra, her eyebrow lifted. “You just walk up to the person you want to be rid of and smash their skull in. Believe me, that provides a wonderful incentive for elected officials to keep their constituents happy.”

Mary laughed in spite of herself. “Still, surely even if the majority are happy, there will always be discontented individuals.”

Bandra nodded. “Which is why we long ago saw the necessity of purging the gene pool of those who might act in an antisocial manner.”

“But this purging of the gene pool…” Mary was trying not to be judgmental, but her tone betrayed her. “I’ve tried to talk to Ponter about this, but it’s difficult; he’s so blindly in favor of it. But even more than your lack of privacy, that notion is what creeps my people out the most.”

“‘Creeps them out’! Oooh, that’s a classic!”

“I’m serious, Bandra. We’ve attempted such things in the past, and…it’s never gone well. I mean, we don’t believe that sort of thing can be done without corruption. We’ve had people try to wipe out specific ethnic groups.”

A bleep.

“Groups that have distinctive characteristics, based on their geographic origin.”

“But diversity is of great value genetically,” said Bandra. “Surely you, as a life chemist, know that.”

“Yes, but—well, I mean, we have tried…my people, I mean…well, not my people, but bad people, bad members of my species, have tried to perform…we call it ‘genocide,’ wiping out whole other races of people, and—”

God damn it, thought Mary. Why couldn’t she just chat with a Neanderthal about the weather, instead of always getting into these horrible topics? If only she could learn to keep her mouth shut.

“Genocide,” repeated Bandra, but without her usual relish. She didn’t have to say that her own kind, Homo neanderthalensis, had been the first victim of Homo sapiens genocide.

“But,” said Mary, “I mean, how do you decide which traits to try to eliminate?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Excessive violence. Excessive selfishness. A tendency to mistreat children. Mental retardation. Predisposition to genetic diseases.”

Mary shook her head; she was still bothered by her aborted conversation on this topic with Ponter. “We believe everyone has the right to breed.”

“Why?” said Bandra.

Mary frowned. “It’s—it’s a human right.”

“It’s a human desire,” said Bandra. “But a right? Evolution is driven by only some members of a population reproducing.”

“I guess we believe that superseding the brutality of natural selection is the hallmark of civilization.”

“But surely,” said Bandra, “the society as a whole is more important than any individual.”

“Fundamentally, I guess my people don’t share that view. We put an enormous value on individual rights and liberties.”

“An enormous value? Or an enormous cost?” Bandra shook her head. “I’ve heard of all the security precautions you require at transportation terminals, all the enforcers you require throughout your cities. You claim not to want war, but you devote a huge proportion of your resources to preparing for it and waging it. You have terrorists, and those who exist by addicting others to chemicals, and a plague of child abuse, and—if you will forgive me—an average intelligence that is much lower than it need be.”

“We’ve never found a way to measure intelligence that isn’t culturally biased.”

Bandra blinked. “How can intelligence be culturally biased?”

“Well,” said Mary, “if you ask a rich child of normal intelligence what word goes with cup, he’ll say ‘saucer’; saucers are little plates we put underneath the cups we drink coffee—hot beverages—from. But if you ask a poor kid with normal intelligence, he might not know the answer, because his family might not be able to afford saucers.”

“Intelligence is not a trivia game,” said Bandra. “There are better ways to assess its strength. We look at the number of neural connections that have grown in the brain; a tally of them is a good objective indicator.”

“But surely those who were denied the right to breed because of their low intelligence…surely they were upset by that.”

“Yes. But, by definition, they were not difficult to outwit.”