“Thanks,” said Mary.

“I have just one request.”

Mary’s heart was pounding. “What?”

“Tell him—tell Ponter—that it wasn’t all my fault, our marriage breaking up. Tell him I was—I am —a good guy.”

Mary reached over and did what she’d thought Colm was going to do earlier: she touched his hand. “Gladly,” she said.

As soon as her lunch with Colm was over, Mary picked up Ponter from her condo in Richmond Hill. He’d been contentedly watching a classic Star Trek rerun on Space: The Imagination Station. They were all new to Ponter, of course, but Mary recognized the episode at once, the histrionic classic “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” with guest stars Frank Gorshin and Lou Antonio chewing up the scenery with their faces made up to be precisely half black and half white.

They got into Mary’s car, and headed out on the five-hour drive up to Reuben Montego’s place—a journey that would get them there just in time for dinner.

As they motored along highway 400, Mary found herself pumping her horn and waving. Louise’s black Ford Explorer with the vanity plate D2O—the formula for heavy water—had just passed them. Louise waved through her rear window and sped on ahead.

“I believe she is exceeding the limitation imposed on velocity,” said Ponter.

Mary nodded. “But I bet she’s really good at talking her way out of tickets.”

Hours passed; kilometers rolled by. Shania Twain and Martina McBride had been replaced first by Faith Hill and then by Susan Aglukark.

“Perhaps I’m not the best spokesperson for Catholicism,” said Mary in response to a comment from Ponter. “Maybe I should introduce you to Father Caldicott.”

“What makes him a better spokesperson than you?” asked Ponter, taking his attention off the road—racing along highways was still very much a novel experience for him—to look at Mary.

“Well, he’s ordained.” Mary had developed a little hand signal—a slight lifting of her left hand—to forestall Hak, Ponter’s Companion, bleeping at words she knew he wasn’t familiar with. “He’s had holy orders conferred upon him; he’s been made a priest. That is, he’s clergy.”

“I am sorry,” said Ponter. “I am still not getting it.”

“There are two classes in a religion,” said Mary. “The clergy and the laity.”

Ponter smiled. “It surely is a coincidence that both of those are words I cannot pronounce.”

Mary smiled back at him; she’d gotten to quite like Ponter’s sense of the ironic. “Anyway,” she continued, “the clergy are those who are specially trained to perform religious functions. The laity are just regular people, like me.”

“But you have told me religion is a system of beliefs, ethics, and moral codes.”

“Yes.”

“Surely all members have equal access to those things.”

Mary blinked. “Sure, but, well, see, much of the—the source material is open to interpretation.”

“For instance?”

Mary frowned. “For instance, whether Mary—the biblical one, Jesus’ mother—remained a virgin for her entire life. See, there are references in the Bible to Jesus’ brethren—‘brethren’ is an old-fashioned word for brothers.”

Ponter nodded, although Mary suspected that if Hak had translated “brethren” at all, he’d already done it as “brothers,” so Ponter had probably heard her say something nonsensical like, “‘Brothers’ is an old-fashioned word for brothers.”

“And this is an important question?”

“No, I suppose not. But there are other issues, matters of moral consequence, that are.”

They were passing Parry Sound now. “Like what?” asked Ponter.

“Abortion, for instance.”

“Abortion…the termination of a fetus?”

“Yes.”

“What are the moral issues?”

“Well, is it right to do that? To kill an unborn child?”

“Why would you want to?” asked Ponter.

“Well, if the pregnancy was accidental…”

“How can you accidentally get pregnant?”

“You know…” But she trailed off. “No, I guess you don’t know. On your world, generations are born every ten years.”

Ponter nodded.

“And all your females have their menstrual cycles synchronized. So, when men and women come together for four days each month, it’s usually when the women can’t get pregnant.”

Again a nod.

“Well, it’s not like that here. Men and women live together all the time, and have sex throughout the month. Pregnancies happen that aren’t wanted.”

“You told me during my first visit that your people had techniques for preventing pregnancy.”

“We do. Barriers, creams, oral contraceptives.”

Ponter was looking past Mary now, out at Georgian Bay. “Do they not work?”

“Most of the time. But not everybody practices birth control, even if they don’t want a baby.”

“Why not?”

Mary shrugged. “The inconvenience. The expense. For those not using contraceptive drugs, the…ah, the breaking of the mood in order to deal with birth control.”

“Still, to conceive a life and then to discard it…”

“You see!” said Mary. “Even to you, it’s a moral issue.”

“Of course it is. Life is precious—because it is finite.” A pause. “So what does your religion say about abortion?”

“It’s a sin, and a mortal one at that.”

“Ah. Well, then, your religion must demand birth control, no?”

“No,” said Mary. “That’s a sin, too.”

“That is…I think the word you would use is ‘nuts.’ ”

Mary lifted her shoulders. “God told us to be fruitful and multiply.”

“Is this why your world has such a vast population? Because your God ordered it?”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

“But…but, forgive me, I do not understand. You had a man-mate for many tenmonths, no?”

“Colm, yes.”

“And I know you have no children.”

“Right.”

“But surely you and Colm had sex. Why were there no offspring?”

“Well, um, I do practice birth control. I take a drug—a combination of synthetic estrogen and progesterone—so that I won’t conceive.”

“Is this not a sin?”

“Lots of Catholics do it. It’s a conflict for many of us—we want to be obedient, but there are practical concerns. See, in 1968, when the whole Western world was getting very liberal about sexual matters, Pope Paul VI issued a decree. I remember hearing my parents talk about it in later years; even they had been surprised by it. It said that every instance of sex has to be open to the creation of children. Honestly, most Catholics expected a loosening, not a tightening, of restrictions.” Mary sighed. “To me, birth control makes sense.”

“It does seem preferable to abortion,” said Ponter. “But suppose you were to get pregnant when you did not wish to. Suppose…”

Mary slowed to let another car pass. “What?”

“No. My apologies. Let us discuss something else.”

But Mary got it. “You were wondering about the rape, weren’t you?” Mary lifted her shoulders, acknowledging the difficulty of the subject. “You’re wondering what my Church would have wanted me to do had I become pregnant because of the rape.”

“I do not mean to make you dwell on unpleasant matters.”

“No, no, it’s all right. I’m the one who brought up the example of abortion.” Mary took a deep breath, let it out, and went on. “If I’d become pregnant, the Church would argue that I should have the baby, even if it was conceived through rape.”

“And would you have?”

“No,” said Mary. “No, I would have had an abortion.”

“Another time when you would not follow the rules of your religion?”