Jock frowned. Why the hell was he getting intelligence reports from a bloody Neanderthal? Then again, he hadn’t yet checked his own e-mail today; maybe it was there. Of course, he’d known that the New York City option was being considered. It was a no-brainer, as far as Jock was concerned: obviously the new portal should be on U.S. soil, and putting it at United Nations Plaza—technically international territory—would appease the rest of the world.

“Lonwis says,” continued Ponter, “that they are planning to take a group of United Nations officials over to the other side—my side. Adikor and I are going to go down to Donakat Island—our version of Manhattan—with them, to survey the site; there are considerable issues related to shielding any large-size quantum computer from solar, cosmic, and terrestrial radiation, lest decoherence occur.”

“Yes? So?”

“Well, so, I thought perhaps you might like to come along? You run this institute devoted to establishing good relations with my world, but you have not yet seen it.”

Jock was taken aback. He found having two Neanderthals here at Synergy just now rather creepy; they looked so much like trolls. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go somewhere where he’d be surrounded by them. “When’s this trip happening?”

“After the next Two becoming One.”

“Ah, yes,” said Jock, trying to keep up a pleasant facade. “I believe our Louise’s phrase for that is, ‘Par- tay! ’ ”

“There is much more to it than that,” said Ponter, “although you will not get to see it on this proposed trip. Anyway, will you join us?”

“I’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Jock.

Ponter smiled that sickening foot-wide smile of his. “It is my kind that is supposed to lack the desire to see beyond the next hill, not yours. You should visit the world you are dealing with.”

Ponter came up to Mary’s office and closed the door behind him. He took Mary in his massive arms, and they hugged tightly. Then he licked her face, and she kissed his. But at last they let each other go, and Ponter’s voice was heavy. “You know I have to return to my world soon.”

Mary tried to nod solemnly, but she apparently was unable to completely suppress her grin. “Why are you smiling?” asked Ponter.

“Jock has asked me to go with you!”

“Really?” said Ponter. “That is wonderful!” He paused. “But of course…”

Mary nodded and raised a hand. “I know, I know. We will only see each other four days a month.” Males and females lived largely separate lives on Ponter’s world, with females inhabiting the city centers, and males making their homes out at the rims. “But at least we’ll be in the same world—and I’ll have something useful to do. Jock wants me to study Neanderthal biotechnology for a month, learn all that I can.”

“Excellent,” said Ponter. “The more cultural exchange, the better.” He looked briefly out the window at Lake Ontario, perhaps envisioning the trip he would soon have to take. “We must head up to Sudbury, then.”

“It’s still ten days until Two become One, isn’t it?”

Ponter didn’t have to check his Companion; of course he knew the figure. His own woman-mate, Klast, had succumbed to leukemia two years ago, but it was only when Two were One that he got to see his daughters. He nodded. “And after that, I am to head down south again, but in my world—to the site that corresponds to United Nations headquarters.” Ponter never said “UN”; the Neanderthals had never developed a phonetic alphabet, and so the notion of referring to something by initials was completely foreign to them. “The new portal is to be built there.”

“Ah,” said Mary.

Ponter raised a hand. “I won’t leave for Donakat until this next Two becoming One is over, of course, and I’ll be back long before Two become One once again.”

Mary felt some of her enthusiasm draining from her. She’d known intellectually that even if she was in the Neanderthal world, twenty-five days would normally pass between times when she could be in Ponter’s arms, but it was a hard concept to get used to. She wished there was a solution, somewhere, in some world, that would see her and Ponter always together.

“If you are going back,” said Ponter, “then we can travel to the portal together. I was going to get a lift with Lou, but…”

“Louise? Is she going over, too?”

“No, no. But she is going to Sudbury the day after tomorrow to visit Reuben.” Louise Benoît and Reuben Montego had become lovers while they were quarantined together, and their relationship had continued afterward. “Say,” said Ponter, “if all four of us are going to be in Sudbury at the same time, perhaps we can have a meal together. I have been craving Reuben’s barbecues…”

Mary Vaughan currently had two homes on her version of Earth: she had been renting a unit at Bristol Harbour Village here in upstate New York, and she owned a condominium apartment in Richmond Hill, just north of Toronto. It was to that latter home that she and Ponter were now heading—a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Synergy Group headquarters. Along the way, once they’d gotten off the New York State Thruway in Buffalo, they’d stopped for KFC—Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ponter thought it was the greatest food ever—a sentiment Mary didn’t disagree with, much to her waistline’s detriment. Spices were a product of warm climates, designed to mask the taste of meat that was off; Ponter’s people, who lived in high latitudes, didn’t use much in the way of seasonings, and the combination of eleven different herbs and spices was unlike anything he’d ever had before.

Mary played CDs on the long drive; it beat constantly hunting for different stations as they moved along. They’d started with Martina McBride’s Greatest Hits, and were now listening to Shania Twain’s Come On Over. Mary liked most of Shania’s songs, but couldn’t stand “The Woman In Me,” which seemed to lack the signature Twain oomph. She supposed she could get ambitious someday and burn her own CD of the album, leaving that song out.

As they drove along, the music playing, the sun setting—as it did so early at this time of year—Mary’s thoughts wandered. Editing CDs was easy. Editing a life was hard. Granted, there were only a few things in her past that she wished she could edit out. The rape, certainly—had it really only been three months ago? Some financial blunders, to be sure. Plus a handful of misspoken remarks.

But what about her marriage to Colm O’Casey?

She knew what Colm wanted: for her to declare, in front of her Church and God, that their marriage had never really existed. That’s what an annulment was, after all: a refutation of the marriage, a denying that it had even happened.

Surely someday the Roman Catholic Church would end its ban on divorce. Until Mary had met Ponter, there’d been no particular reason to wrap up her relationship with Colm, but now she did want to get it over with. And her choices were either hypocrisy—seeking an annulment—or excommunication, the penalty for getting a divorce.

Ironic, that: Catholics could get off the hook for any venial sin just by confessing it. But if you’d by chance married the wrong person, there was no easy recourse. The Church wanted it to be until death do you part—unless you were willing to lie about the very fact of the marriage.

And, damn it all, her marriage to Colm didn’t deserve to be wiped out, to be expunged, to be eradicated from the records.

Oh, she hadn’t been 100 percent sure when she’d accepted his proposal, and she hadn’t been completely confident when she’d walked down the aisle on her father’s arm. But the marriage had been a good one for its first few years, and when it had gone bad it had only done so through changing interests and goals.

There had been much talk of late about the Great Leap Forward, when true consciousness had first emerged on this world, 40,000 years ago. Well, Mary had had her own Great Leap Forward, realizing that her desires and career ambitions didn’t have to take a back seat to those of her lawfully wedded husband. And, from that moment on, their lives had diverged—and now they were worlds apart.