Louise smiled that radiant smile of hers, although it seemed to have no effect on Lonwis. “This is a real honor,” she said. She looked at Mary. “I haven’t been this excited since I met Hawking!” Stephen Hawking had taken a tour of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory—quite the logistics exercise, given that the detector chamber was located two kilometers underground, and 1.2 kilometers horizontally along a mining drift from the nearest elevator.

“My time is extremely valuable,” said Lonwis. “Can we get to work?”

“Of course,” said Louise, still smiling. “Our lab is down the hall.”

Louise started walking, and Lonwis followed. Ponter moved close to Mary and gave her face an affectionate lick, but Lonwis spoke up without looking back. “Come along, Boddit.”

Ponter smiled ruefully at Mary, gave a what-can-you-do shrug of his massive shoulders, and followed Louise and the great inventor, closing the heavy, dark wooden door behind himself.

Mary walked over to her desk and started sorting the mess of papers on it. She used to be—what? Nervous? Jealous? She wasn’t sure, but certainly it had originally made her uneasy when Ponter spent time with Louise Benoît. After all, as Mary had discovered, the male Homo sapiens here at Synergy often referred to Louise behind her back as “LL.” Mary had finally asked Frank, one of the imaging guys, what that meant. He’d been embarrassed, but had ultimately revealed it stood for “Luscious Louise.” And Mary had to admit Louise was just that.

But it no longer bothered Mary when Ponter was with Louise. After all, it was Mary, not the French-Canadian, that the Neanderthal loved, and big boobs and full lips didn’t seem to be high on the Barast list of favored traits.

A moment later there was a knock on her door. Mary looked up. “Come in,” she called.