“I am very sorry,” said Ponter, gently.
Mary assumed he—or Hak—meant “sorry” in the sense of sympathy, not contrition, but she said, because it was all that occurred to her to say, “It wasn’t your fault.”
“No,” said Ponter. It was now his turn to be at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “Were you hurt—physically, I mean?”
“Roughed up a little. Nothing major. But …”
“Yes,” said Ponter. “But.” He paused. “Do you know who did it?”
Mary shook her head.
“Surely the authorities have reviewed your alibi archive and—” He looked away, back at the rock wall flashing by. “Sorry.” He paused again. “So—so he will get away with this?” Ponter was speaking loudly, despite the delicacy of the matter, in order for Hak to pick up his voice over the racket around them. Mary could hear the fury, the outrage, in his words.
She exhaled and nodded slowly, sadly. “Probably.” She paused. “I—we didn’t talk about this, you and I. Maybe I’m presuming too much. In this world, rape is considered a horrible crime, a terrible crime. I don’t know—”
“It is the same on my world,” said Ponter. “A few animals do it—orangutans, for instance—but we are people, not animals. Of course, with the alibi archives, few are fool enough to attempt such an act, but when it is done, it is dealt with harshly.”
There was silence between them for a few moments. Ponter had his right arm half raised, as if he’d thought to reach out and touch her, to try to console her, but he looked down and, with an expression of surprise on his face, as if he were seeing a stranger’s limb, he lowered it.
But then Mary found herself reaching out and touching his thick forearm herself, gently, tentatively. And then her hand slid down the length of his arm and found his fingers, and his hand came up again, and her delicate digits intertwined with his massive ones.
“I wanted you to understand,” said Mary. “We grew very close while you were here. We talked about anything and everything. And, well, as I said, you thought you were never going home; you thought you would have to make a new life here.” She paused. “You never pushed, you never took advantage. By the end, I think, you were the only man on this entire planet that I was getting comfortable being alone with, but …”
Ponter closed his sausagelike fingers gently.
“It was too soon,” said Mary. “Don’t you see? I—I know you like me, and …” She paused. The corners of her eyes were stinging. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It hasn’t happened often in my life, but there have been times when men were interested in me, but, well—”
“But when that man,” Ponter said slowly, “is not like other men …”
Mary shook her head and looked up at him. “No, no. It wasn’t because of that; it wasn’t because of the way you look—”
She saw him stiffen slightly in the strobing light. She didn’t find him ugly—not anymore, not now. She found his face kind and thoughtful and compassionate and intelligent and, yes, dammit, yes—attractive. But what she’d said had come out all wrong, and now, in trying to explain so his feelings wouldn’t be bruised, so he wouldn’t be left wondering forevermore why she’d responded the way she had to his soft touch when they were stargazing, she’d ended up hurting him.
“I mean,” said Mary, “that there’s nothing wrong with your appearance. In fact, I find you quite”—she hesitated, although not from lack of conviction, but rather because so rarely in her life had she ever been so forward with any man—“handsome.”
Ponter made a sad little smile. “I am not, you know. Handsome, I mean. Not by the standards of my people.”
“I don’t care,” said Mary at once. “I don’t care at all. I mean, I can’t imagine you found me attractive physically, either. I’m …” She lowered her voice. “I’m what they call plain, I guess. I don’t turn a lot of heads, but—”
“I find you very striking,” said Ponter.
“If we’d had more time,” said Mary. “If
I’d
had more time, you know, to get over it”—not, Mary was sure, that she ever would—“things … things might have been different between us.” She lifted her shoulders a bit, a helpless shrug. “That’s all. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to understand that I did—do—like you.”
A crazy thought ran through her head. Had things indeed been different—had she come up to Sudbury a whole person, instead of shattered inside, maybe now Ponter wouldn’t be rushing as fast as he could to return to his old life, his own world. Maybe …
No. No, that was too much. He had Adikor. He had children.
And, anyway, if things
had
been different, maybe
she
would be getting ready to go with him, through the portal, to
his
world. After all, she had no one here, and—
But things were
not
different. Things were precisely as they were.
The lift shuddered to a halt, and the buzzer made its raucous call, signaling the opening of the cage door.
Chapter 45
Suddenly there was considerable commotion among the Gliksins. At first, Adikor couldn’t tell what was going on, but then he realized someone was coming down into the barrel-shaped chamber, descending the same long ladder they’d seen before. The person’s broad back was facing the robot’s eye; presumably, it was a Gliksin leader, come to make an assessment of this strange contraption, that—if the effect was mirrored on the other side—appeared to be attached to a cable that was protruding from thin air.
The Gliksins visible in the foreground were beckoning for the newcomer to approach. And he did, running quite fast. The robot was swinging at the end of its tether, as Dern hauled it higher and higher, but then Adikor caught a glimpse on the monitor of the face of the person who had just arrived.
Yes! Incredibly, wonderfully yes!
Adikor’s heart was pounding. It was Ponter! He was clad in the strange clothing of the Gliksins, and wearing one of those plastic turtle shells on top of his head, but there could be no doubt. Ponter Boddit was alive and well!
“Dern!” shouted Adikor. “Stop! Let the robot back down!”
The camera’s perspective started lowering on the screen, Jasmel gasped and clapped her hands together with glee. Adikor wiped tears from his eyes.
Ponter hurried over to the robot. He bent his head oddly, and it took Adikor a moment to realize what Ponter was likely doing: looking at the manufacturer’s contribution stamp on the robot’s frame, confirming for himself that this really was an artifact from his own world. Ponter then looked up into the robot’s camera lens, grinning widely.
“Hello,” said Ponter—the first word out of the cacophony that Adikor had understood. “Hello, my friends! I’d thought I’d lost you forever! Who’s looking at this, I wonder? Adikor, no doubt. How I’ve missed you!”
He paused, then two of the Gliksins spoke to him: one of the light-skinned ones and the dark-skinned man who had been holding on to the robot earlier.
Ponter turned back to the camera. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now. I see the cable coming out of the air, but is it safe for me to cross back over? Can”—his voice caught for a moment—“can I come home?”
Adikor turned away from the screen and looked at Dern, who had returned to the control room. Dern lifted his shoulders. “The robot seemed to come through just fine.”
“You don’t know how long you’ll be able to keep the gate open,” said Jasmel, “or whether you’ll ever be able to establish it again if it closes. He should come through right now.”
Adikor nodded. “But how do we let him know that?”
Jasmel said decisively, “I know how.” She hurried down the steps onto the computing floor, then strode over to where the cable disappeared into the hole in the air. Jasmel placed her hand on the cable, then slid her grip along the cable’s length until her fingertips, then her whole fingers, then her hand, then her forearm disappeared. When everything up to her shoulder was projecting through, she shoved her head over into the other side, and simply shouted out—Adikor and Dern could hear it, but it came entirely from the speaker on the monitor; there was no sound at all coming from the computing floor—“Daddy! Come home!”
“Jasmel, sweetheart!” shouted Ponter, looking up. “I—”
“Come right now!” Jasmel replied. “There’s no telling how long we can keep this open. Just follow the cable—use that ladder, there, to get up here. The computing-room floor is about half an armspan below where my head is; you should have no trouble finding it.”
Jasmel then pulled her head back over to her side and ran over and up into the control room.
There was a flurry of activity visible on the monitor; it was clear no one was quite prepared for this. Two men went to get the ladder Jasmel had indicated. One of the men gave Ponter a great hug, which Ponter enthusiastically returned—it seemed that he hadn’t been mistreated by the Gliksins.
And now a yellow-haired woman had appeared next to Ponter; she hadn’t been there before, and she looked quite winded. She stood on her toes and pressed her lips against Ponter’s cheek; he smiled broadly in return.
The robot swiveled its camera under Dern’s command, and Adikor saw that the problem was more difficult than Jasmel had thought. Yes, the cable was protruding from a hole—but that hole was nowhere near any part of the cavern’s rocky walls. Rather, it was in the middle of the air, several body-lengths above the ground, and at least that far from the closest wall. There was nothing to lean the ladder against.
“Could he climb the cable?” asked Adikor.
Dern shrugged. “He outweighs the robot, I’m sure. It
might
hold him, but …”
But if it snapped, Ponter would crash down to the rock floor, possibly breaking his back.
“Can we get a stronger cable through to him?” asked Jasmel.
“If we
had
a stronger cable,” said Dern, nodding. “But I’ve no idea where to get one down here; I’d have to go up to my workshop on the surface, and that’d take too long.”
But the Gliksins, puny though they might be, were resourceful. Four of them were now holding the base of the ladder, steadying it with all their strength. It wasn’t leaning against anything, but they were shouting at Ponter, presumably urging him to try climbing it anyway.
Ponter ran over to the ladder, and was about to step onto the first rung, even though it was still none too steady. Suddenly, the yellow-haired woman ran up to him, and touched his arm. He turned, and his eyebrow rolled up his browridge in surprise. She pressed something into his other hand and stretched up to place her face against Ponter’s cheek again. He smiled once more, then began climbing the ladder the Gliksins were holding on to.
The ladder swung more and more the higher Ponter got, and Adikor’s heart jumped as it looked like it was going to come crashing down, but more Gliksins rushed to help, and the ladder was straightened again, and Ponter started reaching out with his hand, trying to grab the cable just shy of where it protruded from the midair hole. The ladder swung back, forth, left, right, and Ponter grabbed, missed, grabbed again, missed once more, and then—
Dern’s control box jerked forward slightly. Ponter had the cable!
Adikor, Jasmel, and Dern rushed down onto the computing floor. Jasmel and Dern had taken positions directly in front of the opening, and Adikor, looking to see if there was something he could do to help, moved
behind
the opening, and—
Adikor gasped.
He saw Ponter’s head appear from nowhere, and, from this rear angle, Adikor could see into his neck as if it had been chopped clean through by some massive blade. Dern and Jasmel were helping pull Ponter in now, but Adikor watched, stunned, as more and more of his beloved emerged through the widening hole that hugged his contours—and as the slice through him worked its way down his body, now revealing cross sections through his shoulders; now through his chest with beating heart and inflating lungs; now through his guts; now through his legs; and—
And he was through! All of him was through!
Adikor rushed around to Ponter and hugged him close, and Jasmel hugged her father, too. The three of them laughed and cried, and, finally, disengaging himself, Adikor said, “Welcome back! Welcome back!”
“Thank you,” said Ponter, smiling broadly.
Dern had politely moved a short distance away. Adikor caught sight of him. “Forgive us,” he said. “Ponter Boddit, this is Dern Kord, an engineer who has been helping us.”
“Healthy day,” said Ponter to Dern. Ponter began walking toward him, and—
“No!”
shouted Dern.
But it was too late. Ponter had walked into the taut cable, and it had snapped in two, and the part that projected into the Gliksin world reeled out through the gateway, and the gateway disappeared with an electric blue flash.
The two worlds were separate once more.
Chapter 46
Dern, clearly feeling like a travel cube without a passenger, politely left, heading back up to the surface, letting the family reunion occur in private. Ponter, Adikor, and Jasmel had moved to the small eating room in the quantum-computing lab.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” said Ponter, beaming at Adikor, then at Jasmel. “Either of you.”
“We thought the same thing,” said Adikor.
“You’re fine?” asked Ponter. “Everyone is fine?”
“Yes, I’m all right,” said Adikor.
“And Megameg? How is darling little Megameg?”
“She’s fine,” said Jasmel. “She really hasn’t understood everything that’s been going on.”
“I can’t wait to see her,” said Ponter. “I don’t care if it is seventeen days until Two next become One, I’m going to go into the Center tomorrow and give her a great big hug.”
Jasmel smiled. “She’d like that, Daddy.”
“What about Pabo?”
Adikor grinned. “She missed you awfully. She keeps looking up at every sound, hoping it might be you returning.”
“That sweet bag of bones,” said Ponter.
“Say, Daddy,” said Jasmel, “what was it that female gave you?”