Humans

Chapter Eight

“Welcome to the Synergy Group, Professor Vaughan.”

Mary smiled at Jock Krieger. She hadn’t really known what to expect by way of facilities. The Synergy Group, it turned out, was housed in—well, a house: an old-money mansion in the Seabreeze section of Rochester, right on the shore of Lake Ontario. Ponter would have liked this place: Mary had seen a heron walking along the sandy beach, and ducks, geese, and swans in the harbor, which was lined with pleasure craft.

“Let me show you around,” continued Krieger, ushering Mary farther into the old house.

“Thanks,” said Mary.

“We’ve got twenty-four people on staff currently,” said Krieger, “and we’re still growing.”

Mary was stunned. “Twenty-four people all working on Neanderthal immigration issues?”

“No, no, no. Synergy is involved in a lot more than just that. The DNA project is a particularly high priority, because it’s something we may need right away if the portal ever opens again. But here at Synergy we’re studying all aspects of the Neanderthal situation. The U.S. government is particularly interested in the Companion implants, and—”

“Big Brother is watching,” said Mary.

But Krieger shook his head. “No, my dear, nothing like that. It’s simply that, if we believe what Ponter said, the Companion implants can make a 360-degree detailed recording of everything that’s going on around an individual. Now, yes, we do have four sociologists here evaluating whether the particular uses the Neanderthals put that kind of monitoring to might ever have any applicability in this world—although frankly, I doubt it; we value privacy too much. But, again, if the portal reopens, we want to be on an even footing. If their emissaries can effortlessly record everything they see and hear at all times, obviously we’d like our emissaries to their world to have the same advantage. It’s all about trade, after all—fair trade.”

“Ah,” said Mary. “But Ponter said his Companion wasn’t able to transmit anything to the alibi archives from here; none of the images from his visit were recorded.”

“Yes, yes, a minor technological problem, I’m sure. A recorder could be built on this side.”

They had been walking down a long corridor and had now reached its end. Krieger opened a door. Inside were three people—a black man, a white man, and a white woman. The black man was leaning way back in a chair, tossing crumpled up pieces of paper at a wastebasket. The white guy was staring out at the beach and Lake Ontario beyond. And the woman was pacing back and forth in front of a whiteboard, a felt-tipped marker in hand.

“Frank, Kevin, Lilly, I’d like you to meet Mary Vaughan,” said Krieger.

“Hi,” said Mary.

“Are you in imaging?” asked the one who must be Lilly.

“Sorry?”

“Imaging,” said Frank, and “Imaging,” repeated Kevin—or perhaps it was the other way around. “You know,” added the black man, helpfully, “photography and all that.”

Krieger explained. “There’s a reason we’re in Rochester,” he said. “Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb all have their headquarters here. As I said, replicating the Companion technology is a priority; there’s no city in the world that has more experts on imaging and optics.”

“Ah,” said Mary. She looked at the three occupants of the room. “No, I’m a geneticist.”

“Oh, I know you!” declared the black man. He got up out of his chair, the chair’s back making a relieved sound as it resumed a normal position. “You’re the woman who spent all that time with NP.”

“NP?”

“Neanderthal Prime,” said Krieger.

“His name is Ponter,” said Mary, somewhat miffed.

“Sorry,” said the black man. He extended his hand. “I’m Kevin Bilodeau, formerly with the skunkworks at Kodak. Listen, we’d love to pick your brain about the Companion implant. You saw it up close. What sort of arrangement of lenses did it have?”

“There was only one,” said Mary.

“You see!” crowed Lilly, looking accusingly at the man who, by process of elimination, must be Frank.

“Ponter said it used sensor fields to record images,” said Mary.

“Did he say what sort of sensors?” “Did he mention charge-coupled devices?” “Holography—did he say anything about holography?” “What sort of resolution did the sensors have?” “Did he mention a pixel count?” “Can you describe—”

“People!” said Jock loudly. “People! Mary’s going to be with us for a good, long time. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to chat with her. She’s still getting the orientation tour.”

The three apologized, and they all made small talk for a few moments, then Krieger led Mary out of the room. “They’re certainly enthusiastic,” she said, once the door was closed.

Krieger nodded. “Everyone here is.”

“But I don’t see how they can accomplish what you’ve asked. I mean, I’ve heard of reverse engineering, but without a sample of a Companion implant, how can they hope to duplicate it?”

“Just knowing that it’s possible may be enough to get them going in the right direction.” Krieger opened the door on the opposite side of the hall, and Mary felt her eyes going wide.

“Louise!” she exclaimed.

Sitting at a worktable, a notebook computer open in front of her, was Louise Benoît, the physics postdoc who had saved Ponter’s life when he’d first appeared inside the heavy-water tank at the heart of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

“Hello, Mary,” said Louise, speaking with the French accent Mary had come to know so well. She rose, and her thick brown hair tumbled halfway down her back. Mary was 38 and she knew Louise was 28—but Mary also knew that she herself hadn’t looked that good even when she was 18. Louise was busty, leggy, and had a model’s face; Mary had instinctively disliked her the first time they’d met.

“I’d forgotten that you knew Dr. Benoît,” said Krieger.

Mary shook her head in amazement. “You’re a one-man brain drain, Jock.” She looked again at Louise, wondering how anyone could be so radiant without makeup. “It’s good to see you, Louise.” And then, the cat in her coming to the fore, “How’s Reuben?”

Reuben Montego was the on-site physician at the Creighton Mine. Louise had had quite a torrid little affair with him while Mary, Ponter, Reuben, and she were all quarantined in Sudbury. Mary had assumed they were simply passing time, so she was surprised by Louise’s response. “He’s fine,” she said. “He helped me move my stuff down here, and I’m going up to see him again next weekend.”

“Ah,” said Mary, realizing she’d been put in her place. “And what’s your job here?”

“Dr. Benoît is heading our Portal Group,” said Krieger.

“That’s right,” said Louise. “We’re trying to work out the technology to open a portal from our side into the other universe.”

Mary nodded. Louise hadn’t spent all her time making love with Reuben; she’d also had many long late-night conversations of her own with Ponter Boddit, and doubtless knew more about the Neanderthal view of physics than anyone else on this version of Earth. Mary was ashamed of herself; Louise had never done anything to her—her only crime was being beautiful. “It’ll be nice to spend some time with you again,” said Mary.

“Say,” said Louise, “I could use a roommate down here. What do you think? We seemed to get along well when we were quarantined at Reuben’s.”

“Umm, no,” said Mary. “No thanks. I, ah, I like my privacy.”

“Well, you’ll have no trouble finding a place here in Rochester,” said Louise.

Krieger nodded. “Both Xerox and Kodak have had a lot of layoffs in the last few years, and they’re the city’s principal employers. You can buy houses for a song, and you’ll have your pick of hundreds of apartments.”

“Good to know,” said Mary.

“Try Bristol Harbour Village,” said Louise. “It’s an hour from here, but it’s right on one of the Finger Lakes. Gorgeous. Lots of deer, and you can see the stars at night.”

“Speaking of night skies,” said Mary, realizing Louise might be the one to ask about this, “on my last night in Sudbury, I saw the aurora borealis go nuts. What would cause that?”

Louise looked at Mary for a few seconds, as if she couldn’t believe the question. “Haven’t you seen the newspapers?”

Mary shook her head. “I’ve been busy getting ready to move here.”

“Earth’s magnetic field is behaving erratically,” said Louise. “Readings from all over the globe confirm that. The geodynamo strength is fluctuating substantially.”

“What could cause that?”

Louise shrugged. “No one knows.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Probably not.”

“Probably?” said Mary.

“Well,” said Louise, “nothing quite like this has ever been recorded. There are a number of experts who think that Earth’s magnetic field is collapsing, as a prelude to a pole reversal.”

Mary had heard vaguely of these, but she was pleased that Krieger was the one who said, “Which is?”

“Earth’s magnetic field switches polarity from time to time—you know, the north pole becomes the south pole, and vice versa,” said Louise. “It’s happened over three hundred times in the geological record, but never in historical times, so we really don’t know much about the process. But it’s always been assumed that the reversals occur by the field collapsing, then growing back up again.”

“And you say there’s nothing to worry about,” said Krieger. “It’s not associated with mass extinctions, is it?”

Louise shook her head. “No. The field was actually reversed from its present orientation at the time the dinosaurs died out, but it had been in that state for over a million years before the end of the Cretaceous.” She smiled that mega watt smile. “The worst thing we’ll have to do is repaint our compasses.”

“That’s a relief,” said Mary.

Louise nodded. “And even that may not be necessary,” she said. “As far as we can tell, which pole ends up being north and which one ends up being south is determined quantum mechanically, meaning it’s entirely random—and that means there’s only a fifty-fifty chance of the field reemerging with its polarity reversed.”

Krieger raised his eyebrows. “But if that’s true, then if there’d been a magnetic-field collapse when the dinosaurs died out, we wouldn’t know about it if the field had come up with the same polarity it had had before.”

“You’re worrying for nothing, Jock,” said Louise. “The magnetic-field collapses that we do know about aren’t associated with extinctions. So it doesn’t make any sense to assume that the ones that we missed, because the field happened to come up with the same polarity it had before it collapsed, had any biological effects.” She smiled at Krieger, who, Mary noted, still seemed lost in his own thoughts. “Don’t worry,” Louise said, “I’m sure we’ll all come through this one just fine.”