Ponter blinked. “They shield my eyes from the sun.”

“Really?” said Mary. “I guess that makes sense. But then why don’t my people have them? I mean, Neanderthals evolved in Europe; my ancestors come from Africa, where it’s much sunnier.”

“We wondered that, too,” said Ponter, “when we looked at Gliksin fossils.”

“Gliksin?” repeated Mary.

“The type of fossil hominid from my world you most closely resemble. Gliksins didn’t have browridges, so we had assumed that they were nocturnal.”

Mary smiled. “I guess a lot of what people conclude from looking just at bones is wrong. Tell me: what do you make of this?” She tapped her index finger against her chin.

Ponter looked uncomfortable. “I know now that it is wrong, but …”

“Yes?” said Mary.

Ponter used an open hand to smooth down his beard, showing his chinless jaw. “We do not have such projections, so we assumed …”

“What?” said Mary.

“We assumed it was a drool guard. You have such tiny mouth cavities, we thought saliva was constantly dribbling out. Also, you do have smaller brains than we do, and, well, idiots often drool …”

Mary laughed. “Good grief,” she said. “But, say, speaking of jaws, what happened to yours?”

“Nothing,” said Ponter. “It is the same as it was before.”

“I saw the x-rays that were taken of you at the hospital,” said Mary. “Your mandible—your jawbone—shows extensive reconstruction.”

“Oh, that,” said Ponter, sounding apologetic. “I got hit in the face a couple of hundred months ago.”

“What were you hit with?” asked Mary. “A brick?”

“With a fist,” Ponter said.

Mary’s own jaw dropped. “I knew Neanderthals were strong, but—wow. One punch did that?”

Ponter nodded.

“You’re lucky you weren’t killed,” said Mary.

“We are both lucky—the punchee, as you might say, and the puncher.”

“Why did someone hit you?”

“A stupid argument,” said Ponter. “Certainly, he never should have done it, and he apologized profusely. I chose not to pursue the matter; if I had, he would have been tried for attempted murder.”

“Could he have really killed you with one punch?”

“Oh, yes. I had reacted in time and lifted my head; that is why he connected with my jaw instead of the center of my face. Had he punched me there, he could well have caved in my skull.”

“Oh, my,” said Mary.

“He was angry, but I had provoked him. It was as much my fault as his.”

“Could—could you kill someone with your bare hands?” asked Mary.

“Certainly,” said Ponter. “Especially if I approached them from the rear.” He intertwined his fingers, lifted his arms, then pantomimed smashing his interlocked fists down. “I could smash in a person’s skull by doing that from behind. From the front, if I could get a good punch or kick into the center of someone’s chest, I might crush their heart.”

“But … but … no offense, but apes are very strong, too, and they rarely kill each other in fights.”

“That is because in battles within a troop for dominance, ape fighting is ritualized and instinctive, and they simply slap each other—really just a display behavior. But chimpanzees do kill other chimpanzees, although they do it mostly with their teeth. Clenching the fingers into a fist is something only humans can do.”

“Oh … my.” Mary realized she was repeating herself, but couldn’t think of anything better to sum up her feelings. “Humans here get into fights all the time. Some even make a sport of it: boxing, wrestling.”

“Madness,” said Ponter.

“Well, I agree, yes,” said Mary. “But they almost never kill each other. I mean, it’s almost impossible for a human to kill another human with his bare hands. We just aren’t strong enough, I guess.”

“In my world,” said Ponter, “to hit is to kill. And so we never hit each other. Because any violence can be fatal, we simply cannot allow it.”

“But you were hit,” said Mary.

Ponter nodded. “It happened long ago, while I was a student at the Science Academy. I was arguing as only a youth can, as if winning mattered. I could see that the person I was arguing with was growing angry, but I continued to press my point. And he reacted in an … unfortunate manner. But I forgave him.”

Mary looked at Ponter, imagining him turning the other long, angular cheek toward the person who had hit him.

Adikor had had his Companion summon a travel cube to take him home, and he now was sitting out back, on the deck, alone, researching legal procedures. Someone might indeed be monitoring his Companion’s transmissions, but he could still use it to tap into the world’s accumulated knowledge, transferring the results to a datapad for easier viewing.

His woman-mate, Lurt, had agreed at once to speak on behalf of Adikor in front of the tribunal. But although she and others—she’d be allowed to call witnesses this time—could attest to Adikor’s character and to the stability of his relationship with Ponter, it seemed unlikely that that would be enough to convince Adjudicator Sard and her associates to acquit Adikor. And so Adikor had begun digging into legal history, looking for other cases involving a charge of murder without a body having been found, in hopes of locating a previous judgment that might help him.

The first similar case he uncovered dated way back to generation 17. The accused was a man named Dassta, and he was said to have killed his woman-mate after supposedly sneaking into the Center. But her body was never located; she’d simply disappeared one day. The tribunal had ruled that without a body, no murder could be said to have occurred.

Adikor was thrilled by that discovery—until he read further in the law.

Ponter and Adikor had selected normal deck chairs—indeed, fragile chairs. It had been a sign of Ponter’s unshakable belief that Adikor was cured, that his temper would never again erupt into physical violence. But Adikor was so frustrated now that he smashed the armrest off his deck chair with a pounding of his fist, splinters of wood flying up. For prior cases to have legal significance, he read off his datapad, they had to date from within the last ten generations; society always advanced, said the Code of Civilization, and what people had done long ago had no bearing on the sensibilities of today.

Adikor continued searching and eventually turned up an intriguing case from generation 140—just eight generations before the current one—in which a man was accused of killing another male during a dispute over whether the latter had grown a home too close to the former’s. But, again, no body was ever found. In that case, too, the tribunal had ruled that the lack of the body was enough to dismiss the accusation. That buoyed Adikor, except—

Except …

Generation 140. That was the period between—let’s see—about 1,100 to 980 months ago; eighty-nine to seventy-nine years past. But the Companions had been introduced just shy of a thousand months ago; celebrations commemorating that were coming up.

Did the case in generation 140 date from before or after the introduction of the Companions? Adikor read further.

From before. Gristle! Bolbay would doubtless argue that this rendered it not germane. Sure, she would say, bodies and even living people could easily disappear during the dark times before the great Lonwis Trob had liberated us, but a case in which there couldn’t have been a record of the accused’s activities had no bearing on one in which the accused had contrived a situation specifically to avoid having a record made.

Adikor searched some more. He thought briefly that it might have been convenient if there were people who specialized in dealing with legal matters on behalf of others; that, it seemed, would be a useful contribution. He’d have gladly exchanged labor with someone familiar with this field who could do this research for him. But no; it was surely a bad idea. The mere existence of people who worked full-time on things legal would doubtless increase the number of such matters instigated, and—