The Voyeur in Bandra’s house was attached to the living-room wall, its surface gently following the curvature of the round room. The big square was divided into four smaller squares, each showing the perspective of one of the four Exhibitionists on hand at the Debral nickel mine as the delegation from the United Nations emerged. Bandra was in no shape to be seen in public today, and Mary and she stayed home, ostensibly to watch the arrival of other Gliksins on the Voyeur.

“Oh, look!” said Bandra. “There’s Ponter!”

Mary had been hoping to catch a glimpse of him—and, unfortunately, that seemed to be all she was going to get. The Exhibitionists weren’t interested in a fellow Barast. Their attention was on the group of Gliksins.

“So, who is who?” asked Bandra.

“That man there”—she had the usual Canadian fear of being thought a racist that prevented her from saying “the black man” or “the man with the dark skin,” even though that was the most obvious difference between Kofi Annan and the rest of the group—“is the secretary-general of the United Nations.”

“Which one?”

“That one. On the left, there.”

“The one with brown skin?”

“Um, yes.”

“So, he’s your world’s leader?”

“Well, no. No, not really. But he is the highest official at the UN.”

“Ah. And who is that tall one?”

“That’s Jock Krieger. He’s my boss.”

“He has—he looks…predatory.”

Mary considered this. She supposed Bandra was right. “A lean and hungry look.”

“Ooooh!” said Bandra, delighted. “Is that a saying?”

“It’s a line from a play.”

“Well, it fits him.” She nodded decisively. “I don’t like his bearing. There is no joy in his expression.” But then Bandra seemed to realize that she might be giving offense. “I’m sorry! I shouldn’t speak that way about your friend.”

“He’s not my friend,” said Mary. She adhered to the rule of thumb that a friend was someone to whose home you had been, or who had been to your home. “We just work together.”

“And look!” said Bandra. “He’s not wearing a Companion!”

Mary peered at the screen. “So he isn’t.” She surveyed other parts of the four images. “None of the Gliksins are.”

“How can that be?”

Mary frowned. “Diplomatic immunity, I guess. Which means…”

“Yes?”

Mary’s heart was pounding. “It usually means a diplomat can travel without having his luggage examined. If I can get the codon writer to Jock, he should be able to take it back to my world without difficulty.”

“Perfect,” said Bandra. “Oh, look! There’s Ponter again!”

The flight from Saldak to Donakat Island took two daytenths, which, Ponter knew, was much longer than the comparable journey would have taken in Mare’s world. He spent most of it thinking about Mare and about Vissan’s device that would let them conceive a baby, but Jock, who was sitting next to Ponter in the wide cabin of the helicopter, interrupted his reverie at one point. “You never developed airplanes?” he said.

“No,” said Ponter. “I have wondered about that myself. Certainly, many of my people have been fascinated by birds and flight, but I have seen the long—‘landing strips,’ do you call them?”

Jock nodded.

“I have seen the long landing strips that your airplanes require. I think only a species that was already used to clearing large tracts of land for farming would have considered it natural to do the same for runways, or even roadways.”

“I never thought about it that way,” said Jock.

“Well,” continued Ponter, “we certainly do not have roads the way you do. Most of us are—how would you put it? stay-at-home types. We do not travel much, and we prefer to have food right outside our doors.”

Jock looked around the helicopter. “Still, this is very comfortable. Lots of room between seats. We tend to cram people into planes—and trains and buses, too, for that matter.”

“Comfort is not the specific goal,” said Ponter. “Rather, it is to keep other people’s pheromones out of one’s nose. I have found it very difficult flying on your big airplanes, especially with the pressurized cabins. One of the reasons we do not fly nearly as high as you do is so that our cabins do not have to be sealed; we bring in fresh air constantly to avoid the build up of pheromones, and—” Ponter stopped talking, and tipped his head. “Ah, thank you, Hak.” He looked at Jock. “I had asked Hak to let me know when we were passing over the spot that corresponds to Rochester, New York. If you look out the window now…”

Jock pressed his face up against a square of glass. Ponter moved over and looked through another window. He could see the south shoreline of what he knew Jock called Lake Ontario.

“It’s just forest,” said Jock, astonished, turning back to Ponter.

Ponter nodded. “There are some hunting lodges, but no large-scale habitation.”

“It’s hard to even recognize the geography without the roads.”

“We will pass over one of the Finger Lakes shortly—our name for them is the same as yours; the imagery is obvious. You should have no trouble recognizing them.”

Jock looked out the window again, mesmerized.

The Exhibitionists didn’t get to fly south with the contingent from the United Nations, although Bandra said there would be others on hand when they arrived at Donakat Island. In the interim, Bandra told the Voyeur to shut off, and it did so. She then turned to Mary. “We didn’t speak much last night about…about my problem with Harb.”

Mary nodded. “Is that—is that why your woman-mate left?”

Bandra got up and tipped her head back, looking at the ceiling. Hundreds of birds were painted on it, representing dozens of species; each meticulously rendered by her. “Yes. She could not take seeing what he did to me. But…but in a way, it’s better that she’s gone.”

“Why?”

“It’s easier to hide one’s shame when no one else is around.”

Mary got up and put an arm on each of Bandra’s shoulders and stepped back a pace so that she could look her full in the face. “Listen to me, Bandra. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Bandra managed a small nod. “I know, but…”

“But nothing. We will find a way out of this.”

“There is no way,” said Bandra, and she moved a hand up to wipe her eyes.

“There must be,” said Mary. “And we’ll find it. Together.”

“You don’t have to do this,” said Bandra softly, shaking her head.

“Yes, I do,” said Mary.

“Why?”

Mary shrugged a little. “Let’s just say I owe womankind one.”

“And here we are, ladies and gentleman,” said Councilor Bedros. “Donakat Island—what you call Manhattan.”

Jock couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He knew New York like the back of his hand—but this!

This was gorgeous.

They were flying over the South Bronx—except that it was old-growth forest, walnut, cedar, chestnut, maple, and oak, the leaves afire with autumn colors.

“Look!” shouted Kofi Annan. “Rikers Island!”

And indeed it was, sans penal colony, of course, and only a third the size of the artificially expanded island Jock knew. As the chopper went over it, Jock saw that there was no bridge leading south to Queens. Nor, of course, was there any airport off to the left, where LaGuardia was in his world. Instead, there was a harbor there. Jock was taken aback when he spotted what looked like an aircraft carrier—he hadn’t thought the Neanderthals had such things. He hated encouraging the Neanderthal next to him to begin his endless chatting again, but he had to know. “What’s that?”

“A ship,” said Ponter in a tone that made it sound as though the answer were obvious.

“I know it’s a ship,” replied Jock, miffed. “But why does it have that wide, flat top?”

“Those are solar collectors,” said Ponter, “to power its turbines.”