Hybrids (14 page)

It took a moment for Mary to figure out what Vissan meant; she thought Mary was a clone, made from ancient DNA.

“No, that’s not it. I’m—”

“Let me,” said Ponter. “Vissan, do you know who I am?”

Vissan narrowed her eyes, then shook her head. “No.”

“That’s my daddy,” said Mega. “His name’s Ponter Boddit. He’s a 145. I’m a 148!”

“Do you know of a chemist named Lurt Fradlo?” asked Ponter, looking at Vissan.

“Fradlo? Of Saldak? I know her work.”

“She’s Adikor’s woman-mate,” said Mega. “And Adikor is my daddy’s man-mate.”

Ponter put a hand on Mega’s shoulder. “That’s right. Adikor and I are both quantum physicists. Together, he and I accessed an alternative reality in which Gliksins survived to the present day and Barasts did not.”

“You’re ruffling my back hair,” said Vissan.

“No, he’s not!” said Mega. “It’s true! Daddy disappeared into another world, down in the Debral nickel mine. Nobody knew what happened to him. Daklar thought Adikor had done something bad to Daddy, but Adikor’s a good guy; he’d never do anything like that! Jasmel—that’s my sister—she worked with Adikor to bring Daddy back. But then they made a portal that’s always open, and Mare came through from the other side.”

“No,” said Vissan, looking down. “She
must
be of this world. She has a Companion.”

Mary looked down, as well; a bit of Christine’s faceplate was protruding past her jacket’s sleeve. She took off her jacket, rolled up her shirtsleeve, and held out her arm. “But my Companion has only recently been installed,” said Mary. “The wound is still healing.”

Vissan took her first step toward Mary, then another, then one more. “So it is,” she said at last.

“What we are saying is true,” said Ponter. He gestured at Mary. “You can
see
that it’s true.”

Vissan placed her hands on her broad hips, and studied Mary’s face, with its tiny nose, high forehead, and bony projection from the lower jaw. Then, her voice full of wonder, she said, “Yes, I suppose I can.”

Vissan was a 144, most of a decade older than Mary. She had green eyes and hair that was predominantly gray, with only a few blond streaks betraying its original color. She was wearing fairly ragged manufactured clothing that had been patched here and there by pieces of hide, and was carrying a leather bag, presumably containing the bounty she’d gathered that morning.

The four of them were walking back toward Vissan’s cabin. “All right,” she said, looking at Mary, “I accept your story of who you are. But I still don’t know why you have sought me out.”

They had come to a small stream. Ponter picked up Mega and hopped over it first, then he offered his hand to help Mary across. Vissan forded the stream herself.

“I’m a life chemist, too,” said Mary. “We’re interested in your codon writer.”

“It is banned,” said Vissan, lifting her shoulder. “Banned by a bunch of short-headed fools.”

Ponter made a silencing motion. Up ahead were some more deer. Mary looked at the beautiful creatures.

“Vissan,” whispered Ponter, although Christine gave the translation a greater volume, since only Mary could hear that. “Do you have enough food? I would gladly bring down one of those deer for you.”

Vissan laughed, and spoke in a normal voice. “You are kind, Ponter, but I am doing fine.”

Ponter dipped his head, and they continued on, until the deer scattered of their own accord. Up ahead, Vissan’s cabin was visible.

“My interest in the codon writer isn’t just academic,” said Mary. “Ponter and I wish to have a child.”

“I’m going to have a little sister!” said Mega. “I already have a big sister. Not many people get to have a big sister
and
a little sister, so I’m special.”

“That’s right, darling,” said Mary. “You’re
very
special.” She turned back to Vissan.

“What of your Barast woman-mate?” asked Vissan, looking now at Ponter.

“She is no more,” said Ponter.

“Ah,” said Vissan. “I’m sorry.”

They had reached the cabin. Vissan opened the door and motioned for Ponter, Mary, and Mega to follow her in. Vissan took off her fur coat—

—and Mary saw the hideous scarring on the inside of her left forearm, where she’d carved out her Companion.

Ponter sat down with Mega at the table, giving her some attention. Mega had picked up a pine cone and two nice stones on the way back that she wanted her father to see.

Mary looked at Vissan. “So,” she said, “does your prototype still exist?”

“Why do you need it?” asked Vissan. “Has one of you been sterilized by the government?”

“No,” said Mary. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Then why do you need my device?”

Mary looked over at Ponter, who was listening intently to Mega, who was now telling him about things she’d been learning in school. “Barasts and Gliksins, plus chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans, all have a common ancestor,” said Mary. “That ancestor apparently had twenty-four pairs of chromosomes, as do all of its descendants except Gliksins. In Gliksins, two chromosomes have fused into one, meaning we only have twenty-three pairs. The overall genome is the same length, but the differing chromosome count would make a natural conception problematic.”

“Fascinating!” said Vissan. “Yes, the codon writer could easily produce a matched diploid set of chromosomes that combined Ponter’s DNA and your own.”

“So we’d hoped,” said Mary. “Which is why we’re interested in whether the prototype still exists.”

“Oh, it exists, all right,” said Vissan. “But I can’t let you have it—it’s a banned device. As much as I hate that fact, it
is
the reality. You would be punished for possessing it.”

“It is banned here,” said Mary.

“Not just here in the vicinity of Kraldak,” said Vissan. “It is banned all over the world.”

“All over
this
world,” said Mary. “But not in
my
world. I could take it back there; Ponter and I could conceive there.”

Vissan’s eyes went wide under her undulating browridge. She was quiet for a few moments, and Mary knew better than to interrupt her thinking. “I suppose you could, at that,” said Vissan, at last. “Why not? Better that somebody get the benefit of it, rather than no one.” She paused. “You would need medical aid still,” said Vissan, “to remove an egg from your body. Your natural haploid set of chromosomes would be vacuumed out of it, and a doctor would add in a full diploid set of chromosomes created using the codon writer. The egg would then be implanted in your womb. From that point on, it will be precisely like a regular pregnancy.” She smiled. “Cravings for salted tubers, morning sickness, and all.”

Mary had been enthusiastic when it had all been abstract—a magical, black-box solution. But now…“I…I hadn’t realized you would eliminate my natural DNA. I thought we’d just remap Ponter’s DNA so that it was compatible with mine.”

Vissan raised her eyebrow. “You said you are a life chemist, Mare. You know there’s nothing special about deoxyribonucleic acid produced by your body, or by a machine. In fact, it would be impossible for you to tell a natural string and a manufactured string apart. There is no chemical difference between them.”

Mary frowned. She’d chided her sister often enough for paying a premium for “natural” vitamins, which were chemically indistinguishable from those produced in labs. But…“But one of them came from my body, and the other came from a machine.”

“Yes, but…”

“No, no, you
are
right,” said Mary. “I’ve been telling my students for years that DNA is nothing but coded information.” She smiled at Ponter and Mega. “As long as it’s
our
coded information, it will still be our baby.”

Ponter looked up and nodded. “Our personal genetic material will need to be sequenced, of course.”

“Easily done,” said Vissan. “In fact, the codon writer can do that, too.”

“Wonderful!” said Mary. “Is the prototype here?”

“No. No, it’s hidden. Buried. But I wrapped it in plastic and metal to protect it. It’s not far away, though; I can easily retrieve it.”

“It would mean a great deal to us,” said Mary. Then a thought struck her. “Would you like to come back with me? To my world? I can guarantee you that we won’t ban your device there, or stop you from continuing research related to it.”

“What an astonishing idea!” said Vissan. “What is your world like?”

“Well, it’s different. Um, we have a bigger population, for one thing.”

“How big?”

“Six billion.”

“Six billion! I think you hardly need a device to aid conceptions, then…”

Mary nodded, conceding that. “And males and females live together all the time.”

“Madness! Don’t they get on each other’s nerves?”

“Well…yes, I suppose they do sometimes, but…As I said, it’s a different place. And we have many wonderful things. We have a space station—a permanent habitat orbiting our planet. We have buildings that tower into the sky”—although, Mary thought ruefully, not as many as we used to. “And we have much more varied cuisine.”

“Ponter, have you been there?”

“My daddy’s been there
three
times now!” said Mega.

“Would I like it?” asked Vissan.

“That depends,” said Ponter. “Do you like it here, in the wilderness?”

“Very much. I have gotten quite used to it.”

“Do smells bother you?”

“Smells?”

“Yes. For power, they burn oil and coal, so there is a stench in their cities.”

“That hardly sounds appealing. I think I will stay here.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” said Mary. “But could you teach us how to operate the codon writer, then?”

Vissan looked at Ponter. “How do you feel about this? I have willingly shed myself of the trappings of civilization, and so the Grays—High or Low—have no authority over me. But you…”

Ponter looked at Mary, then back at Vissan. “I have de-fied the High Grays before; I chose to flout their order to return to this universe so that the portal could be shut down. Indeed, I would still be in Mare’s universe if an ambassador hadn’t convinced others to cross over. And…”

“Yes?”

“And, well, sometimes people are sterilized without it being right, so…”

Ponter trailed off, and Mary spoke up. “He’s referring to his man-mate, Adikor. When Ponter first disappeared into my world, they thought Adikor had killed him and disposed of the body. They were going to sterilize him.” She turned to Ponter. “Isn’t that right, Ponter?”

“What?” said Ponter, his tone odd. “Oh, yes. Yes, that was what I meant, of course…”

“Well, if you are comfortable with having the codon writer,” said Vissan, “I am content to let you have it.” She gestured toward the door. “I’ll go get it. Just don’t ever tell anyone—in this world, at least—that you have it.”

“Jock, can I have a word with you?”

Jock Krieger looked up from his desk. He was, perhaps, a bit paranoid about showing his appreciation for just how beautiful Louise was. It was a generational thing, he knew—he was thirty-six years older than Louise, after all—but he’d seen some of his colleagues at RAND get in trouble for supposedly sexist comments. “Ah, Dr. Benoît,” he said, rising—that much of the manners his parents had drilled into him he couldn’t suppress. “What can I do for you?”

“Remember when we were talking before about the effect a planetary magnetic-field collapse might have on consciousness?”

“How could I forget?” said Jock. “You said that human consciousness had booted up during a magnetic-field collapse.”

“That’s right. Forty thousand years ago, when the Great Leap Forward occurred, Earth’s magnetic field was undergoing a collapse, just like it’s beginning to now. In our universe, the field came up with its orientation the same as it had been before the collapse—which it will do half the time, leaving no record here. But in the other universe, the orientation came up flipped, and so it
was
recorded in their geological record. As I said, it couldn’t be a coincidence that hominid consciousness booted during a field collapse, and—”

“And you said this time it might have effects on our consciousness again, possibly even causing a crash.”

“Exactly. Now, when I first suggested that, it was only because of the coincidence that the Great Leap Forward occurred during a time when Earth’s magnetic field had collapsed; obviously, there was a correlation between magnetic fields and consciousness. But since then, I’ve been digging, trying to find what research, if any, has been done about the electromagnetic nature of consciousness—and, frankly, Jock, I’m even more worried than I was before.”

“Why? The Neanderthals have been through one collapse since—the one that began a quarter of a century ago in their world—and they had no problems.” Jock had been astonished when he’d read the research by Coe and Prévot showing that, in fact, his Earth’s geological record provided evidence that field collapses took place in a matter of weeks, not centuries. “If they came through their collapse just fine, why shouldn’t we?”

“As much as I like the Barasts”—calling a Neanderthal a Neanderthal was no longer politically correct, apparently—“they
are
a different species, with differently constructed brains,” said Louise. “All you have to do is look at their skulls to see that. Just because they came through all right doesn’t mean we will.”

“Oh, come on, Louise!”

“No, really. I’ve been searching the web for information on the relationship between electromagnetic fields and consciousness, and I came across something very interesting called CEMI theory.”

“Semi-theory?” repeated Jock.
Perfect name for a half-baked idea…

“CEMI, with a
C
,” said Louise. “It’s short for Conscious Electromagnetic Information theory. A couple of researchers independently developed it, Johnjoe McFadden at the University of Surrey and Susan Pockett in New Zealand.” She looked out Jock’s window, apparently gathering her thoughts, then: “Look, we’ve identified all sorts of specific areas in the human brain: where visual images are created, where mathematical operations occur, even—I’m sure you’ve read about this in the press—where the seat of religious feelings is. But the one thing we’ve
never
located is the physical site, the actual location, of
consciousness
in the brain. Well, McFadden and Pockett think they’ve found it—not
in
the brain, but surrounding it and permeating it: an electromagnetic field. Such a field would allow neurons that are separated by great distances in the brain to nonetheless connect with each other, binding together all the little bits of information into an integrated whole, a coherent picture of reality.”

“Wireless communication in the brain?” said Jock, intrigued despite himself.

“Exactly. Back in 1993, Karl Popper proposed that consciousness was the manifestation of a force field in the brain, but he thought it must be some
unknown
kind of force field, since he’d figured we’d have discovered it already if it consisted of energy we were familiar with. But McFadden and Pockett say the field is simply electromagnetic.”

“And they’ve detected it?”

“Oh, there certainly
is
electromagnetic activity in and around the brain; that’s what EEGs measure, after all. But remember, our Barast friends have unified electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force—in other words, there’s much more to electromagnetic fields, including both the Earth’s and the ones produced by our brains, than we’ve ever been aware of.”

“But have these researchers you mentioned proved that such fields are actually linked to consciousness?” asked Jock.

Louise brushed dark hair out of her eyes. “No, not yet. And I will admit that there’s a lot of resistance from some quarters to the very notion. Good old René Descartes believed in dualism—the notion that the body and the mind are separate things—but that’s been out of fashion for quite some time now, and, well, some see CEMI as an unwelcomed return to it. But CEMI theory makes
sense
from an information-processing standpoint. Essentially McFadden and Pockett are saying that awareness and information are the same phenomenon viewed from different reference frames, and—”

“Yes, so?”

“Well,” said Louise, “if consciousness is an electromagnetic phenomenon, then it’s perhaps no surprise that its first appearance was during a geomagnetic field collapse. Now, as I said, we know from the recent Barast experience that such a collapse
on its own
won’t cause problems with consciousness—but I’m a solar physicist, remember. I may specialize in neutrinos, but I’m interested in the whole range of solar radiation—and our brains, with these delicate electromagnetic fields, will be hit by an onslaught of normally deflected solar radiation for years or decades during the collapse. The more I look into this, the more I think a consciousness crash of some sort just might occur.”

“But that’s crazy,” said Jock. “Consciousness
can’t
be electromagnetic. I had an MRI last year, and I assure you, young lady, that I was fully conscious throughout the procedure.”

“That’s the most common objection to this theory,” said Louise, nodding. “McFadden addressed that directly in his most recent paper in the
Journal for Consciousness Studies
. He contends that fluid within the brain ventricles effectively creates a Faraday cage, insulating the brain from most external electric fields. And, as for MRIs, he points out that those are
static
electric fields—changing only the direction of moving charges, and so they don’t have physiological effects. Likewise, Earth’s magnetic field is static and pretty uniform—or was, at least until the collapse began. But changing—as opposed to static—external electromagnetic fields
do
induce electric currents in the brain. And these do affect brain activity; in fact, there are strict guidelines for repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation that have to be followed to prevent inducing seizures in normal people.”

“But—but if consciousness is electromagnetic, why can’t we detect it?”

“Actually, we can. Susan Pockett has enumerated all sorts of research that says that the brain’s electromagnetic field does change in replicable ways when experiencing specific qualia: you can measure changes in the brain’s electromagnetic field when you’re looking at something red as opposed to blue, or hearing a middle C instead of a high C, and so on. She’s really good at shooting down objections to this theory. For instance, if the corpus callosum—the bundle of nerves that connects the left and right hemispheres—is severed, you’d expect there to be no communication at all between the two halves of the brain. And yet, except in very contrived situations, split-brain patients perform quite normally; despite there being no physical connection between their two hemispheres, their consciousness
is
integrated—precisely, says Pockett, because consciousness is manifested in the electromagnetic field that contains the entire brain, not through neural-chemical reactions.”

“So you’re saying—what?—that the two halves of the brain communicate telepathically? Oh, come on!”

“They
are
communicating, even in the absence of the hard-wired link between them,” said Louise. “That’s a fact.”

“Then why don’t I pick up your thoughts when I’m standing next to you?”

“Well, first, remember the brain is essentially enclosed in a Faraday cage, shielding it. Second, Pockett believes the major oscillations associated with consciousness are in the range of one to one hundred hertz, with most of the power around forty hertz. That means they have a wavelength of about 8,000 kilometers, and the ideal antenna for picking up an electromagnetic signal is one wavelength long. Without either a truly giant receiver or
very
sensitive equipment, you’d never pick up any part of my consciousness by just being close to me. But that the field is integrated over the volume of a single brain
does
make sense. One of the big issues in consciousness is the so-called binding problem. Look at that book, there.” She pointed at a volume sitting on Jock’s desk, an old RAND nuclear-warfare study. “One part of the brain recognizes that it’s green. Another part picks out the outline of the object from the background. A third part digs up the word ‘book’ to describe it. We
know
that’s how the brain works—a bunch of compartmentalized functions. But how do all those bits get bound together, producing the thought that we’re looking at a green thing called a book? CEMI says the electromagnetic field is what does the binding.”

“This is all very speculative,” said Jock.

“It’s all very cutting edge, but it
is
a good, solid scientific theory that makes falsifiable predictions. I tell you, Jock, I hadn’t thought a lot about exactly what constitutes consciousness until all this stuff with alternative worlds began, but it’s a fascinating area of research.”

“And you’re worried that our consciousness might get scrambled as Earth’s magnetic field collapses?”

“I don’t say anything is going to happen—after all, you
are
right when you say the Neanderthals went through their own magnetic-field collapse recently and nothing happened to them. But, well, yes—I
am
worried. And I think you should be, too.”