Mary had been enthusiastic when it had all been abstract—a magical, black-box solution. But now…“I…I hadn’t realized you would eliminate my natural DNA. I thought we’d just remap Ponter’s DNA so that it was compatible with mine.”

Vissan raised her eyebrow. “You said you are a life chemist, Mare. You know there’s nothing special about deoxyribonucleic acid produced by your body, or by a machine. In fact, it would be impossible for you to tell a natural string and a manufactured string apart. There is no chemical difference between them.”

Mary frowned. She’d chided her sister often enough for paying a premium for “natural” vitamins, which were chemically indistinguishable from those produced in labs. But…“But one of them came from my body, and the other came from a machine.”

“Yes, but…”

“No, no, you are right,” said Mary. “I’ve been telling my students for years that DNA is nothing but coded information.” She smiled at Ponter and Mega. “As long as it’s our coded information, it will still be our baby.”

Ponter looked up and nodded. “Our personal genetic material will need to be sequenced, of course.”

“Easily done,” said Vissan. “In fact, the codon writer can do that, too.”

“Wonderful!” said Mary. “Is the prototype here?”

“No. No, it’s hidden. Buried. But I wrapped it in plastic and metal to protect it. It’s not far away, though; I can easily retrieve it.”

“It would mean a great deal to us,” said Mary. Then a thought struck her. “Would you like to come back with me? To my world? I can guarantee you that we won’t ban your device there, or stop you from continuing research related to it.”

“What an astonishing idea!” said Vissan. “What is your world like?”

“Well, it’s different. Um, we have a bigger population, for one thing.”

“How big?”

“Six billion.”

“Six billion! I think you hardly need a device to aid conceptions, then…”

Mary nodded, conceding that. “And males and females live together all the time.”

“Madness! Don’t they get on each other’s nerves?”

“Well…yes, I suppose they do sometimes, but…As I said, it’s a different place. And we have many wonderful things. We have a space station—a permanent habitat orbiting our planet. We have buildings that tower into the sky”—although, Mary thought ruefully, not as many as we used to. “And we have much more varied cuisine.”

“Ponter, have you been there?”

“My daddy’s been there three times now!” said Mega.

“Would I like it?” asked Vissan.

“That depends,” said Ponter. “Do you like it here, in the wilderness?”

“Very much. I have gotten quite used to it.”

“Do smells bother you?”

“Smells?”

“Yes. For power, they burn oil and coal, so there is a stench in their cities.”

“That hardly sounds appealing. I think I will stay here.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” said Mary. “But could you teach us how to operate the codon writer, then?”

Vissan looked at Ponter. “How do you feel about this? I have willingly shed myself of the trappings of civilization, and so the Grays—High or Low—have no authority over me. But you…”

Ponter looked at Mary, then back at Vissan. “I have de-fied the High Grays before; I chose to flout their order to return to this universe so that the portal could be shut down. Indeed, I would still be in Mare’s universe if an ambassador hadn’t convinced others to cross over. And…”

“Yes?”

“And, well, sometimes people are sterilized without it being right, so…”

Ponter trailed off, and Mary spoke up. “He’s referring to his man-mate, Adikor. When Ponter first disappeared into my world, they thought Adikor had killed him and disposed of the body. They were going to sterilize him.” She turned to Ponter. “Isn’t that right, Ponter?”

“What?” said Ponter, his tone odd. “Oh, yes. Yes, that was what I meant, of course…”

“Well, if you are comfortable with having the codon writer,” said Vissan, “I am content to let you have it.” She gestured toward the door. “I’ll go get it. Just don’t ever tell anyone—in this world, at least—that you have it.”

“Jock, can I have a word with you?”

Jock Krieger looked up from his desk. He was, perhaps, a bit paranoid about showing his appreciation for just how beautiful Louise was. It was a generational thing, he knew—he was thirty-six years older than Louise, after all—but he’d seen some of his colleagues at RAND get in trouble for supposedly sexist comments. “Ah, Dr. Benoît,” he said, rising—that much of the manners his parents had drilled into him he couldn’t suppress. “What can I do for you?”

“Remember when we were talking before about the effect a planetary magnetic-field collapse might have on consciousness?”

“How could I forget?” said Jock. “You said that human consciousness had booted up during a magnetic-field collapse.”

“That’s right. Forty thousand years ago, when the Great Leap Forward occurred, Earth’s magnetic field was undergoing a collapse, just like it’s beginning to now. In our universe, the field came up with its orientation the same as it had been before the collapse—which it will do half the time, leaving no record here. But in the other universe, the orientation came up flipped, and so it was recorded in their geological record. As I said, it couldn’t be a coincidence that hominid consciousness booted during a field collapse, and—”

“And you said this time it might have effects on our consciousness again, possibly even causing a crash.”

“Exactly. Now, when I first suggested that, it was only because of the coincidence that the Great Leap Forward occurred during a time when Earth’s magnetic field had collapsed; obviously, there was a correlation between magnetic fields and consciousness. But since then, I’ve been digging, trying to find what research, if any, has been done about the electromagnetic nature of consciousness—and, frankly, Jock, I’m even more worried than I was before.”

“Why? The Neanderthals have been through one collapse since—the one that began a quarter of a century ago in their world—and they had no problems.” Jock had been astonished when he’d read the research by Coe and Prévot showing that, in fact, his Earth’s geological record provided evidence that field collapses took place in a matter of weeks, not centuries. “If they came through their collapse just fine, why shouldn’t we?”

“As much as I like the Barasts”—calling a Neanderthal a Neanderthal was no longer politically correct, apparently—“they are a different species, with differently constructed brains,” said Louise. “All you have to do is look at their skulls to see that. Just because they came through all right doesn’t mean we will.”

“Oh, come on, Louise!”

“No, really. I’ve been searching the web for information on the relationship between electromagnetic fields and consciousness, and I came across something very interesting called CEMI theory.”

“Semi-theory?” repeated Jock. Perfect name for a half-baked idea…

“CEMI, with a C,” said Louise. “It’s short for Conscious Electromagnetic Information theory. A couple of researchers independently developed it, Johnjoe McFadden at the University of Surrey and Susan Pockett in New Zealand.” She looked out Jock’s window, apparently gathering her thoughts, then: “Look, we’ve identified all sorts of specific areas in the human brain: where visual images are created, where mathematical operations occur, even—I’m sure you’ve read about this in the press—where the seat of religious feelings is. But the one thing we’ve never located is the physical site, the actual location, of consciousness in the brain. Well, McFadden and Pockett think they’ve found it—not in the brain, but surrounding it and permeating it: an electromagnetic field. Such a field would allow neurons that are separated by great distances in the brain to nonetheless connect with each other, binding together all the little bits of information into an integrated whole, a coherent picture of reality.”