Hybrids by Robert J. Sawyer Read Free Book Online Page B

away, seeming almost embarrassed to go on. “You’re a bit of a hero of mine,” she said.
    Mary blinked. “Me?”
    “There aren’t that many female Canadian scientists who really make it big, but you have. Even before Ponter came along, you’d really put us on the map. The work you did with ancient DNA! First-rate! Absolutely first-rate! Who says that Canadian women can’t take the world by storm?”
    “Um, thank you.”
    “You’ve been quite the role model for me. You, Julie Payette, Roberta Bondar…”
    Mary had never thought of herself in that august company—Payette and Bondar were Canadian astronauts. But, then again, she
had
gotten to another world before either of them…
    “Thank you,” said Mary again. “Umm, we really don’t have that much time…”
    Veronica blushed a bit. “Sorry; you’re right. Let me explain the procedure. The work I’m doing is based on research begun here at Laurentian in the 1990s by Michael Persinger. I can’t take credit for the fundamental idea—but science is all about replication, and my job is verifying his findings.”
    Mary looked around the lab, which had the usual university mix of shiny new equipment, battered old equipment, and beat-up wooden furniture. Veronica went on. “Now, Persinger had about an 80 percent success rate. My equipment is second-generation, a modification of what he developed, and I’m getting about 94 percent.”
    “It seems a bit of a coincidence that this research is going on so close to the portal between worlds,” said Mary.
    But Veronica shook her head. “Oh, no, Mary, not really! We’re all here because of the same thing—the nickel that was deposited when that asteroid hit the Earth here two billion years ago. See, originally Persinger was interested in the UFO phenomenon: how come flying saucers are most frequently seen by guys named Clete and Bubba out in the back forty.”
    “Well,” said Mary, “you can get beer anywhere.”
    Veronica laughed more than even Mary thought the joke deserved. “That’s true—but Persinger decided to take the question at face value. Not that he, or I, believe in flying saucers, but there
is
a real psychological phenomenon that makes people
think
they’ve seen such things, and Persinger got to wondering why that phenomenon would be triggered outdoors, especially in isolated locations. Laurentian does a lot of mining studies, of course, and when Persinger started looking for possible causes for the out-in-the-countryside UFO experience, the mining engineers here suggested piezoelectric discharges.”
    Ponter’s Companion, Hak, had bleeped a couple of times, indicating he hadn’t understood some words, but neither Ponter nor Mary had interrupted Veronica, who was clearly on a roll. Apparently, though, she didn’t expect Ponter to know the term “piezoelectric,” and so explained it of her own accord: “Piezoelectricity is the generation of electricity in rock crystals that are being deformed or are otherwise under stress. You get piezoelectric discharges, for instance, when a pickup truck drives over rocky ground out in the country—the classic UFO-sighting scenario. Persinger managed to reliably replicate that sort of electromagnetic effect in the lab, and lo and behold, he could make just about anyone think they’d seen an alien.”
    “An alien?” repeated Mary. “But you’d mentioned God.”
    “To-may-to, to-mah-to,” said Veronica, grinning a very toothy grin. “It’s all the same thing.”
    “How?”
    Veronica pulled a book off her shelf:
Why God Won’t Go Away: The Biological Basis for Belief
. “Newberg and d’Aquili, the authors of this book, did brain scans of eight Tibetan Buddhists meditating and of a bunch of Franciscan nuns praying. Naturally, those people showed increased activity in the areas of the brain associated with concentration. But they also showed
decreased
activity in the parietal lobe.” She tapped the side of her skull, indicating the