Mary forced a smile. “You’re right, of course. Sorry.” She paused. “And you’re right that we should do it at the correct time.” Mary’s own birthday was late in the year; she knew what it was like to be even six months younger than some of the other kids on the school playground. She couldn’t imagine how devastating it would feel to be a year or two younger than everyone else. Yes, their daughter would be raised principally in Mary’s world, but when she was all grown up, she might choose to make her home in the Neanderthal universe—and she would never fit in here if she wasn’t part of a specific generation.

Ponter was quiet for a time. “Are you prepared to decide?”

Mary looked over Ponter’s shoulder, into the flames.

“My brother Bill married a Protestant,” she said at last. “Ho boy, was my mom upset about that! Bill and Dianne—that’s his wife—had to work out which religious traditions they were going to raise their children in. I only heard bits and pieces, and of course only from Bill’s point of view, but it was apparently a big battle. And now you’re asking me if I’m ready to decide whether or not my child should be pre-disposed to believing in God?”

Ponter said nothing; he just held her, and stroked her hair. If Ponter was dying to know what Mary’s decision was going to be, he gave no sign of it—and Mary was grateful to him for that. If he’d seemed anxious, she’d have known that he had a preferred choice, and that would have made it harder for her to sort through her feelings. As to what his preferred choice, if any, might be, still Mary couldn’t say. Her first thought was that he’d want his child to be like him, devoid of the…

She hated the term, but it had already percolated into the popular press, even before the bridge to the Neanderthal world had opened.

…devoid of the “God organ.”

Then again, Ponter was bright enough to know, despite everything they’d done here today, that you couldn’t order up a person the way you ordered a pizza: “Give me a number two, hold the onions.” Everything blended, making the whole. Perhaps he wanted his new daughter to have his mother’s faith? Indeed, perhaps this was the test he’d been waiting for of the personality sculptor’s hypothesis? Would his feelings toward a daughter who believed in an afterlife be different than his feelings toward Jasmel and Mega?

Mary would never ask him about it, not after the decision had been made. Once the appropriate genes were coded into the chromosomes of their child, there would be no point having regrets or reopening an old debate.

There was a scene in Star Trek V —the one William Shatner directed, the one in which Spock’s half brother Sybok went off on a search for God—that portrayed Spock’s own birth, in a cave, of all places, his human mother Amanda attended by a Vulcan midwife. When the infant Spock was presented to Sarek, his Vulcan father, Sarek said only two words, each filled with infinite disappointment: “So human… ”

Mary shook her head at the memory. What the hell had Sarek expected to see? Why did he set out to have a hybrid child, and then act disappointed that it had characteristics of its mother’s species? Mary and Ponter were truly seeking the best of both worlds—and that meant including things.

“It’s not a defect,” said Mary, at last, not bothering to define “it.” “It’s not something wrong with the Gliksin brain. Being able to believe in God—if we want to, if we so choose—is part of who my people are.” She took Ponter’s hand. “I know what religion has caused—what organized religion has caused. And I even am starting to agree with you about the harm the mere belief in an afterlife has done in my world, too. So much of our inhumanity does seem related to believing that all injustices will eventually be righted in an existence yet to come. But, nonetheless, I want my daughter—our daughter—to at least potentially believe in those things.”

“Mare…” began Ponter.

She pulled away from him. “No. No, let me finish. Your people sterilize criminals, and say it’s just to maintain the health of the gene pool. But it’s more than that, isn’t it, at least when the criminals are male? You don’t just sterilize them by, for instance, performing a vasectomy. No, you castrate them—you remove that part of their anatomy that is responsible not just for aggression, but also for sexual desire, too.”

Ponter looked quite uncomfortable, Mary thought, but, then again, she supposed no man liked thinking about castration. She pressed on. “I stand here as one who has been raped, who has been a victim of the very worst that testosterone makes possible. But I also stand here as someone who has known all the joy of sex with a passionate male lover. Perhaps, maybe, in some circumstances, removing the testosterone-producing glands is appropriate. And perhaps even in some cases removing the God organ would be appropriate, too. But not at the beginning, not at the outset.”

Mary again looked at Ponter. “My Church has this notion of original sin: that all people are born tainted, carrying guilt and evil because of the actions of their ancestors. But I reject that. Veronica Shannon talked to us about behaviorism, Ponter—about the idea that you can inculcate any behavior, any response, into a human being. The mechanism—intermittent reinforcement versus consistent reinforcement—may differ slightly between Gliksins and Barasts, but the underlying concept is the same. Anew child, a new life, is nothing but potentials to be developed one way or another—and I want our child, our daughter, to have all the potentials she can and, through your love and mine as her parents, to become the best possible human being she can be.”

Ponter nodded. “Whatever you want is fine by me.”

“This,” said Mary. “This is what I want. A child who can believe in God.”

Mary, Ponter, and Mega spent the night at Vissan’s place, sleeping on the floor. The next day, with the codon writer wrapped in furs so that no one would notice it, the three of them had a travel cube come and take them to Kraldak Center, and from there they flew by helicopter to Saldak Center…just in time for the end of Two becoming One.

Ponter met up with Adikor, and the two of them boarded a hover-bus heading back out to male territory. Ponter, Mary knew, had another trip coming up tomorrow. That’s when he would accompany the contingent from the United Nations, including Jock Krieger, down to Donakat Island.

Mary’s heart was aching, and she was already counting the days until Two would become One again—not that she expected to still be living on this world at that point; she would have to return to the Synergy Group before then. But of course she’d return here for the holiday.

Mary felt extraordinarily jealous of Adikor. It was unfair, she knew, but the whole thing had left her feeling like the Other Woman, as if Ponter had snuck away for a rendezvous with an illicit lover, only to have to return to his real family.

Mary began the long, slow walk back to the house she shared with Bandra, carrying the fur-wrapped codon writer. Many other women were milling around, but none seemed sad. Those who were talking among themselves were laughing; those walking alone mostly had smiles on their broad faces—not smiles of greeting, but secret, personal smiles, smiles of remembering.

Mary felt like an idiot. What the hell was she doing here, in this world, with these people? Yes, she’d enjoyed her time with Ponter. The lovemaking had been just as fabulous as it always was, the conversation just as fascinating, and the trip with Ponter and Mega to meet Vissan had been wonderful in all sorts of ways. But it was another twenty-five days until she and Ponter could be together again!