important?”
“If the gateway between the two worlds ever opens again,” Krieger said, “we may have many Neanderthals coming into our world.”
Mary narrowed her eyes. “And you want to be able to discriminate against them?”
Krieger shook his head. “Nothing like that, I assure you. But we’ll need to know for immigration reasons, for providing appropriate health care, and so on. You don’t want an unconscious person being given the wrong medicine because doctors couldn’t tell if he was Neanderthal or Gliksin.”
“Surely you can simply look to see if he has a Companion implant. Ponter says all his people have them.”
“Without disparaging your friend in the least, Professor Vaughan, we have only his word for that. For all we know, he was in fact a parolee in his universe, and that thingamajig was some sort of tracking device worn only by him and other criminals.”
“Ponter is not a criminal,” said Mary.
“Nonetheless, you can surely appreciate that we prefer to have our own methods for determining which species a person belongs to, rather than having to rely on something we’ve heard anecdotally.”
Mary nodded slowly. It did, sort of, make sense. And, after all, there was benign precedent: the Canadian government already put a lot of work into defining who is and who isn’t a Status Indian, so that social programs and entitlements could properly be administered. Still…“There’s no reason to think the portal might open again, is there? I mean, there haven’t been any signs, have there?” She’d love to see Ponter again, but…
Krieger shook his head. “No. But we believe in being prepared. And I’ll be honest: I grant that your Mr. Boddit looked, shall we say, distinctive. But it’s possible that another Neanderthal might have less pronounced features, and be able to slip into a population of our kind of humans.”
Mary smiled. “You’ve been talking to Milford Wolpoff.”
“Indeed. As well as Ian Tattersall and just about every other Neanderthal expert you can name. There seems to be no consensus among them about how much Neanderthals differed from us.”
Mary nodded; that much was certainly true. Some, like Wolpoff, held that Neanderthals were just another variety of
Homo sapiens
—at best a race, if that term had any validity, and certainly members of the same species as modern humans. Others, including Tattersall, felt the opposite: that Neanderthals were a species in their own right,
Homo neanderthalensis
. To date, all DNA studies seemed to support the latter view—but Wolpoff and company felt the few Neanderthal DNA samples available, including the 379 nucleotides of mitochondrial DNA that Mary herself had extracted from the Neanderthal type specimen at the
Rheinisches Landesmuseum,
were either aberrant or misinterpreted. It wasn’t too much to say that this was the most hotly contested issue in all of paleoanthropology.
“We still only have complete genetic material from one Neanderthal,” said Mary, “namely Ponter Boddit. It might be impossible to find anything diagnostic in that one sample.”
“I understand that. But we won’t know for sure until you try.”
Mary looked around the lab. “I have duties here, at York. Classes to teach. Grad students.”
“I understand that, too,” said Krieger. “But I’m sure arrangements can be made to cover your responsibilities. I’ve already had a word with the university’s president.”
“You’re talking about a full-time research project?”
“We’ll certainly compensate you for the entire academic year, yes.”
“Where would I work? Here?”
Krieger shook his head. “No, we’d want you to come to our secure facility.”
“In Rochester, right?”
“Rochester, New York, yes.”
“That’s not that far from here, is it?”
“I flew in today,” said Krieger, “and that takes no time at all. I understand it’s about three and a half hours by car.”
Mary considered. She would still be able