“You’ve got a son from generation 148; is he old enough to understand what might happen to you—and to him?” said an Exhibitionist whose name Adikor didn’t know, a 147 who presumably had a younger audience watching him over their Voyeurs.
Exhibitionists shouted questions at poor Jasmel, too. “Jasmel Ket, how are relations between you and Daklar Bolbay now?” “Do you really believe your father might still be alive?” “If the tribunal does hand down a murder conviction against Scholar Huld, how will you feel about having defended a guilty person?”
Adikor felt anger growing within him, but he fought, fought, fought to conceal it. He knew the Companion-broadcasts from the Exhibitionists were being monitored by countless people.
For her part, Jasmel was refusing to respond at all, and the Exhibitionists at last left her alone. Eventually, those grilling Adikor had their fill, and they filed out of the chamber, leaving him and Jasmel alone in the vast room. Jasmel met Adikor’s eyes for a moment, then looked away. Adikor wasn’t sure what to say to her; he’d been adept at reading her father’s moods, but Jasmel had much of Klast in her, too. Finally, to fill the silence between them, Adikor said, “I know you did the best you could.”
Jasmel looked now at the ceiling, with its painted auroras and centrally mounted timepiece. Then she lowered her gaze, facing Adikor. “Did you do it?” she asked.
“What?” Adikor’s heart pounded. “No, of course not. I love your father.”
Jasmel closed her eyes. “I never knew it was you who had tried to kill him before.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill him. I was just angry, that’s all. I thought you understood that; I thought—”
“You thought because I continued to speak on your behalf that I wasn’t troubled by what I saw? That was my father! I saw him spitting out his own teeth!”
“It was long ago,” said Adikor, softly. “I, ah, I didn’t remember it as quite so … so bloody. I am sorry you had to see that.” He paused. “Jasmel, don’t you understand? I love your father; I owe everything that I am to him. After that … incident … he could have pressed charges; he could have had me sterilized. But he didn’t. He understood that I had—have—a sickness, an inability sometimes to control my anger. I owe that I am still whole to him; I owe that I have a son, Dab, to him. My overwhelming feeling toward your father is gratitude. I would never hurt him. I couldn’t.”
“Maybe you got tired of being in his debt.”
“There was no debt. You’re still young, Jasmel, and you haven’t yet bonded, but soon you will, I know. There is no debt between people who are in love; there is only total forgiveness, and going forward.”
“People don’t change,” said Jasmel.
“Yes, they do. I did. And your father knew that.”
Jasmel was quiet for a long time, then: “Who are you going to have speak for you this time?”
Adikor had just ignored the question when it had been shouted at him by the Exhibitionists. But now he gave it serious thought. “Lurt is the natural choice,” he said. “She’s a 145, old enough that the adjudicators should respect her. And she said she’d do anything to help.”
“I hope …” said Jasmel. She continued again a moment later. “I hope she does well for you.”
“Thank you. What are you going to do now?”
Jasmel looked directly at Adikor. “For now—for right now—I just need to get away from here … and from you.”
She turned and walked out of the massive Council chamber, leaving Adikor all alone.
Chapter 30
Keyword(s): Neanderthal
An Islamic spiritual leader has denounced the so-called Neanderthal man as clearly the botched product of Western genetic-engineering experiments. The Wilayat al-Faqih in Iran is calling on the Canadian government to admit that Ponter Boddit is the product of a wickedly immoral recombinant-DNA procedure …
Ottawa is being pressured to grant Canadian citizenship to Ponter Boddit—and the request is coming from an unusual source. U.S. president George W. Bush today asked Prime Minister Jean Chretien to expedite the process by which the Neanderthal is made an official Canadian. Ponter Boddit has indicated that he was born in a location corresponding to Sudbury, Ontario, in his world. “If he was born in Canada,” says Bush, “then he’s a Canadian.”
The U.S. president is pushing for Boddit to be issued a Canadian passport so the Neanderthal can travel freely to the United States once the quarantine is lifted, thereby ending the debate on Capitol Hill about whether he could be allowed through U.S. Customs.
Section 5, Paragraph 4, of the Canadian Citizenship Act gives broad discretion, which Bush is urging be invoked: “In order to alleviate cases of special and unusual hardship or to reward services of an exceptional value to Canada, and notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the Governor in Council may, in his discretion, direct the Minister to grant citizenship to any person …”
An Internet petition with more than 10,000 names gathered worldwide has been forwarded to Canada’s Minister of Health, demanding that Ponter Boddit be permanently quarantined …
Inco shares closed today at a fifty-two-week high …
“It’s a media circus,” said long-time Sudbury Rotarian Bernie Monks. “Northern Ontario hasn’t seen anything like this since the Dionne Quintuplets were born, back in 1934 …”
Job offers continue to pour in for Ponter Boddit. Japan’s NTT Basic Research Laboratory has offered him a directorship of a new quantum-computing unit. Microsoft and IBM have also offered him contracts, with generous cash/stock packages. MIT, CalTech, and eight other universities have offered him faculty positions. The RAND Corporation has likewise made an overture to him, as has Greenpeace. No word yet from the Neanderthal about whether any of these positions appeal to him …
A coalition of scientists in France has issued a statement saying that although Ponter Boddit’s arrival on this Earth did indeed take place on Canadian soil, he clearly was not born in that nation, and no Neanderthaler ever lived in North America. His citizenship, they contend, should therefore be French, since the youngest Neanderthal fossils are found in that country …
Civil-rights advocates on both sides of the border are condemning the forced quarantine of the so-called Neanderthal man, saying there is no evidence he poses a medical threat to anyone …
Blood test after blood test came back negative. Whatever Ponter had been suffering from seemed to have abated, and there was no evidence that he was carrying anything dangerous to the humans of this world. Still, the LCDC wasn’t ready to cancel the quarantine yet.
Ponter was wearing his own shirt again today, the one he’d had on when he arrived here. The RCMP had delivered a small wardrobe of additional clothes for him bought at the local Mark’s Work Wearhouse, but they really didn’t fit very well; clothing didn’t seem to come off the rack for a person who looked like a slightly squished version of Mr. Universe.
Ponter’s—or Hak’s—English was getting remarkably good. The Companion didn’t have the ee phoneme in its preprogrammed repertoire, but it had now recorded both Mary and Reuben saying that sound, and would play back the appropriate version as required to render English words it otherwise couldn’t articulate. But it sounded funny hearing her name said as “Mare-ee,” half in one of Hak’s voices and half in either her own or Reuben’s, so Mary told the Companion not to bother; people periodically called her “Mare,” anyway, and it would be just fine for Hak to continue to do that, too. Louise likewise told Hak it was all right if the Companion went on referring to her as just “Lou.”