Hominids (10 page)

In any event, Ponter was now sitting up in bed, eating a late breakfast a nurse had just brought him. He had looked at the tray for a time after its arrival, as though something was missing. He’d finally wrapped his right hand in the white linen napkin, and was using that covered hand to eat with, picking up strips of bacon one at a time. He only used cutlery for the scrambled eggs, and for those he employed the spoon rather than the fork.

Ponter set the toast back down after sniffing it. He also disdained the contents of the little box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, although he did seem to enjoy puzzling out the complex perforations to open it up into a self-contained bowl. After a tentative sip, he drained the small plastic cup of orange juice in a single gulp, but he seemed to want nothing to do with either the coffee or the 250-milliliter carton of partially skimmed milk.

Reuben went to the bathroom to get Ponter a cup of water—and he stopped dead in his tracks.

Ponter
was
from somewhere else. He had to be. Oh, it was common enough for a person to forget to flush the toilet, but …

But Ponter not only hadn’t flushed—he had wiped himself with the long, thin “Sanitized for Your Protection” loop, instead of with the toilet paper. No one from anywhere in the developed world could possibly make that mistake. And Ponter
was
indeed from a technological culture; there was that intriguing implant on the inside of his left wrist.

Well, thought Reuben, the best way to find out about this man was by talking with him. He clearly didn’t—or wouldn’t—speak English, but, as Reuben’s old grandmother used to say, there be nine and sixty ways to skin a cat.

“Ponter,” said Reuben, using the one word he’d picked up the previous night.

The man was silent for a moment too long, and he tilted his head slightly. Then he nodded, as if acknowledging someone other than Reuben. “Reuben,” said the man.

Reuben smiled. “That’s right. My name is Reuben.” He spoke slowly. “And your name is Ponter.”

“Ponter,
ka
,” said Ponter.

Reuben pointed at the implant on Ponter’s left wrist. “What’s that?” he said.

Ponter lifted his arm.
“Pasalab,”
he said. Then he repeated it slowly, syllable by syllable, presumably understanding that a language lesson had begun:
“Pas-a-lab.”

And with that, Reuben realized he’d made a mistake; there was no corresponding English word he could now supply. Oh, perhaps “implant,” but that seemed such a generic term. He decided to try something different. He held up one finger. “One,” he said.

“Kolb,”
said Ponter.

He made a peace sign. “Two.”

“Dak,”
said Ponter.

Scout’s honor. “Three.”

Four fingers. “Four.”

A full hand, digits splayed. “Five.”

Reuben continued, adding a finger at a time from his left hand until he had heard numerals from one to ten. He then tried the numbers out of sequence, to see if Ponter would always give the same word in response, or was just making it up as he went along. As far as Reuben could tell—he was having trouble keeping track of these strange words himself—Ponter never slipped up. It wasn’t just a stunt; it seemed to be a real language.

Reuben next started indicating parts of his own body. He pointed an index finger at his shaved head. “Head,” he said.

Ponter pointed at his own head.
“Kadun,”
he said.

Next, Reuben indicated his left eye. “Eye.”

And then, Ponter did something astonishing. He lifted his right hand, palm out, as if asking Reuben to hold on for a minute, and then he began talking rapidly in his own language, with his head slightly lowered and cocked, as if speaking to somebody over an invisible telephone.

“This is pathetic!” said Hak, through Ponter’s cochlear implants.

“Yeah?” replied Ponter. “We’re not all like you, you know; we can’t just download information.”

“More’s the pity,” said Hak, “but, really, Ponter, if you’d been paying attention to what they’d been saying to each other and to you since we got here, you’d already have picked up a lot more of their language than a simple list of nouns. I have cataloged with high confidence 116 words in their language, and with reasonable confidence guessed at another 240, based on the context in which they have been used.”

“Well,” said Ponter, somewhat miffed, “if you think you can do a better job than me …”

“With all due respect, a chimpanzee could do a better job than you at learning language.”

“Fine!” said Ponter. He reached down and pulled out the control bud on his Companion that turned on the external speaker. “You do it!”

“My pleasure,” said Hak, through the cochlear implants, then, switching to the speaker—

“Hello,” said a female voice. Reuben’s heart jumped. “Yoo-hoo! Over here.”

Reuben looked down. The voice was coming from the strange implant on Ponter’s left wrist. “Talk to the hand,” the implant said.

“Umm,” said Reuben. And then, “Hello.”

“Hello, Reuben,” replied the female voice. “My name is Hak.”

“Hak,” repeated Reuben, shaking his head slightly. “Where are you?”

“I am here.”

“No, I mean
where
are you? I get that that thingamajig is some kind of cell phone—say, you know, you’re not supposed to use those in hospitals; they can interfere with monitoring equipment. Could we call you back—”

Reuben stopped talking. The bleep had come from the implant.

“Language learning,” said Hak. “Follow.”

“Learning? But …”

“Follow,”
repeated Hak.

“Um, yes, all right. Okay.”

Suddenly, Ponter nodded, as if he’d heard a request that Reuben hadn’t. He pointed at the door to the room.

“That?” said Reuben. “Oh, that’s a door.”

“Too much words,” said Hak.

Reuben nodded. “Door,” he said. “Door.”

Ponter got up out of the bed and walked toward the door. He put his large hand on the handle, and pulled the door open.

“Um,” said Reuben. Then: “Oh! Open. Open.”

Ponter closed the door.

“Close.”

Ponter then swung the door repeatedly open and closed.

Reuben frowned, then, getting it: “Opening. You’re opening the door. Or closing it. Opening. Closing. Opening. Closing.”

Ponter walked over to the window. He indicated it with a sweep of both hands.

“Window,” said Reuben.

He tapped on the glass.

“Glass,” Reuben supplied.

The female voice again, as Ponter lifted the window up in its frame, exposing the screen: “I am opening the window.”

“Yes!” said Reuben. “Opening the window! Yes.”

Ponter pulled the window down. “I am closing the window,” said the female voice.

“Yes!” said Reuben. “Yes, indeed!”

Adikor Huld had forgotten what Last Five was like. He could smell them, smell all the women. They weren’t menstruating—not quite yet. The beginning of that, coinciding with the new moon, would mark the end of Last Five, the end of the current month and the start of the next. But they all would be menstruating soon; he could tell by the pheromones wafting on the air.

Well, not
all
of them, of course. The prepubescent ones—members of generation 148—wouldn’t, and neither would the postmenopausal ones—most members of generation 144, and just about everyone from earlier generations. And if any of them had been pregnant or lactating, they wouldn’t menstruate, either. But generation 149 wasn’t due for many months, and generation 148 had long since been weaned. Of course, there were a few who, usually through no fault of their own, were sterile. But the rest, all living together in the Center, all easily smelling each other’s pheromones, all synchronized in their cycles: they were all about to begin their periods.

Adikor understood well that it was hormonal changes that made so many of them testy at the end of each month, and why his male ancestors, long before they’d started numbering generations, had headed for the hills during this time.

The driver had dropped Adikor off near the home he had been looking for, a simple rectangular building, half grown by arboriculture, half built with bricks and mortar, with solar panels on its roof. Adikor took a deep breath through his mouth—a calming breath, bypassing his sinuses and his sense of smell. He let the air out slowly and walked along the small path through the arrangement of rocks and flowers and grasses and shrubs that covered the area in front of the house. When he got to the door—which was ajar—he called out, “Hello! Anybody home?”

A moment later, Jasmel Ket appeared. She was tall, lithe, and just past her 250th moon, the age of majority. Adikor could see Ponter in her face, and Klast, too; lucky Jasmel had inherited his eyes and her cheeks, instead of the other way around.

“W-w-what—” stammered Jasmel. She fought to compose herself, then tried again. “What are you doing here?”

“Healthy day, Jasmel,” said Adikor. “It’s been a long time.”

“You’ve got a lot of neck muscle coming here—and during Last Five besides!”

“I didn’t kill your father,” said Adikor. “Honestly, I did not.”

“He’s gone, isn’t he? If he’s alive, where is he?”

“If he’s dead, where is his body?” asked Adikor.

“I don’t know. Daklar says you disposed of it.”

“Is Daklar here?”

“No, she’s gone to the skills exchange.”

“May I come in?”

Jasmel glanced down at her Companion implant, as if to make sure it was still functioning. “I—I guess so,” she said.

“Thanks.” She stepped aside, and Adikor walked into the house. The interior was cool, a welcome relief from the summer heat. A household robot was puttering along in the background, lifting up knickknacks with its insect-like arms and sucking dust off them with a small vacuum.

“Where’s your sister?” asked Adikor.

“Megameg,”
said Jasmel, emphasizing the name, as if it were a slight that Adikor had apparently forgotten it. “Megameg is playing
barstalk
with friends.”

Adikor wondered whether to demonstrate that he did know all about Megameg; after all, Ponter talked of her and Jasmel constantly. Had this been just a social call, he’d perhaps have let it go. But it was more than that; much more. “Megameg,” repeated Adikor. “Yes, Megameg Bek. A 148, isn’t she? A little small for her age, but feisty. She wants to be a surgeon when she grows up, I believe.”

Jasmel said nothing.

“And you,” said Adikor, driving the point home, “Jasmel Ket, are studying to be a historian. Your particular interest is pre-generation-one Evsoy, but you also have a fondness for generations thirty through forty here on this continent, and—”

“All right,” said Jasmel, cutting him off.

“Your father spoke of you often—and with great pride and love.”

Jasmel raised her eyebrow slightly, clearly both surprised and pleased.

“I did not kill him,” said Adikor again. “Believe me, I miss him more than I can say. It—” He stopped himself; he’d been about to point out that there hadn’t yet been a Two becoming One since Ponter’s disappearance; Jasmel hadn’t really had to face his absence yet. Indeed, it would have been unusual for her to have seen her father in the past three days, since Two last ceased being One. But Adikor had had to deal with the reality of Ponter’s absence, with the emptiness of their home, every waking moment since he’d disappeared. Still, it was pointless to argue whose grief was the greater; Adikor recognized, after all, for all that he loved Ponter, Ponter and his daughter Jasmel were genetically related.

Perhaps Jasmel had been thinking the same thing, though. “I miss him, too. Already. I—” She looked away. “I didn’t spend much time with him when Two last became One. There’s this boy, you see, who …”

Adikor nodded. He wasn’t quite sure what it was like for a father of a young woman. He himself had no child from generation 147; oh, he’d been paired to Lurt back when that generation was conceived, but somehow she hadn’t become pregnant—and, yes, they had endured the requisite jokes about a physicist and a chemist failing to understand biology. Adikor’s offspring from generation 148 was Dab, a small boy still living with his mother, and Dab wanted to spend every possible moment with his father when they got together each month.

But Adikor had heard Ponter’s—well, not complaints, really. He’d understood it was the natural way of things. But, still, that Jasmel had so little time for him when Two became One had saddened Ponter, Adikor knew. And now, it seemed, Jasmel was coming to grips with the fact that her father wouldn’t be there ever again, that she’d missed out on time she could have spent with him, and now there was no way to make amends, no way to catch up, no way she would ever be hugged by him again, ever hear his voice praising her or telling her a joke or asking her how things were going.

Adikor looked around the room and helped himself to a seat. The chair was wooden, made by the same carpenter who supplied the ones he and Ponter had had on their deck; the woman had been an acquaintance of Klast.

Jasmel sat on the opposite side of the room. Behind her, the cleaning robot left, heading into another part of the house.

“Do you know what will happen if I’m found guilty?” asked Adikor.

Jasmel closed her eyes, perhaps to forestall them making a quick glance down. “Yes,” she said softly. But then, as if it were a defense: “What difference does it make, though? You’ve already reproduced; you’ve got two children.”

“No, I don’t,” said Adikor. “I have only one, a 148.”

“Oh,” said Jasmel softly, perhaps embarrassed that she knew less about her father’s partner than Adikor did about his partner’s daughters.

“And, besides, it’s not just me. My son Dab will be sterilized, too, and my sister Kelon—everyone who shares fifty percent of my genetic material.”