Calculating God

16

Cooter Falsey’s eyebrows knit in confusion as he looked at J. D. Ewell. “What do you mean, what we’re going after is already dead?”

Ewell was still sitting on the edge of the motel bed. “They’ve got a museum here in Toronto, and it’s got some special fossils on display. Those fossils are a lie, says Reverend Millet. A blasphemy. And they’ll be showing those fossils to that great big spider alien.”

“Yeah?” said Falsey.

“This world is a testament to God’s handiwork. And those fossils, they either are fakes or the work of the devil. Creatures with five eyes! Creatures with spikes sticking out everywhere! You’ve never seen the like. And scientists are telling the aliens that those things are real.”

“All fossils are fake,” said Falsey. “Created by God to test the faith of the weak.”

“You and I know that. And it’s bad enough the atheists are able to teach our kids about fossils in schools, but now they are showing them to aliens, making those aliens think we believe the lie of evolution. The aliens are being led to believe that we humans don’t believe in God. We’ve got to make it clear that those godless scientists aren’t speaking for the majority.”

“So . . . ,” said Falsey, inviting Ewell to continue.

“So, Reverend Millett, he wants us to destroy those fossils. The Bogus Shale, he calls them. They’re on special display here, and then they’re supposed to travel down to Washington, but that won’t happen. We’re going to put an end to the Bogus Shale once and for all, so those aliens will know that we don’t care about such things.”

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” said Falsey.

“No one will.”

“What about the alien? Doesn’t one of them spend a lot of time at the museum. We’ll be in a powerful lot of trouble if we hurt him.”

“Don’t you read the papers? He’s not really there; that’s just a projection.”

“But what about the people who go to the museum? They may be misguided, looking on all them fossils, but they aren’t evil like those abortion docs.”

“Don’t worry,” said Ewell. “We’ll do it on a Sunday night, after the museum has closed.”

I called Susan and Ricky and told them to prepare for a very special guest; Susan could do miracles with three hours’ notice. I worked on my journal for a time, then left the museum. I’d taken to wearing a floppy Tilley hat and sunglasses to disguise my appearance for the short walk from the staff entrance to the subway station; the UFO nuts still seemed to mostly congregate out in front of the ROM’s main entrance, quite some distance away. So far, none of them had intercepted me — and by the time I came out this evening, they all seemed to have gone home, anyway. I went down into the subway station and boarded a silver train.

When we pulled into Dundas station, a young man with a wispy blond beard entered the train. He was the right age to be a student at Ryerson; that university’s campus was just north of Dundas. The young man was wearing a green sweatshirt covered with white lettering that said:

I smiled; the provincial parliament buildings were at Queen’s Park, of course. Everyone, it seemed, was taking shots at Premier Harris these days.

When I finally arrived at the house on Ellerslie, I gathered my wife and son, and we went into the living room. I opened my briefcase and put the dodecahedron that was the holoform projector on the coffee table. Then I sat on the couch. Ricky scrambled up next to me. Susan perched herself on the arm of the love seat. I looked at the blue clock on the VCR. It was 7:59 P.M.;Hollus had agreed to join us at 8:00.

We waited, with Ricky fidgeting. The projector always made a two-toned bleep when turning on, but so far, it was dead silent.

8:00.

8:01.

8:02.

I knew the VCR clock was right; we had a Sony unit that picked up a time signal over the cable. I reached over to the coffee table and adjusted the dodecahedron’s position slightly, as if that would make any difference.

8:03.

8:04.

“Well,” said Susan, generally to the room. “I should go make the salad.”

Ricky and I continued to wait.

At 8:10, Ricky said, “What a ripoff.”

“I’m sorry, sport,” I said. “I guess something came up.” I couldn’t believe that Hollus had let me down. A lot of things are forgivable; making a man look bad in the eyes of his son isn’t one of them.

“Can I go watch TV until it’s time for dinner?” Ricky asked.

We normally let Ricky watch only one hour of TV a night, and he’d already done that. But I couldn’t disappoint him again. “Sure,” I said.

Ricky got up. I let out a heavy sigh.

He’d said we were friends.

Ah, well. I stood up, picked up the projector, weighed it in my hand, then put it back in my briefcase, and —

A sound, from the back door. I closed my briefcase and headed off to investigate. Our back door opened onto a wooden deck that my brother-in-law Tad and I had built five summers ago. I opened the vertical blinds over the sliding glass door, and —

It was Hollus, standing on my deck.

I removed the security rod along the base of the glass door and slid the door open. “Hollus!” I said.

Susan had appeared behind me, wondering what I was up to. I turned to look at her; she’d seen Hollus and other Forhilnors often enough on TV, but her mouth was now agape.

“Come in,” I said. “Come in.”

Hollus managed to squeeze through the doorway, although it was a tight fit. He had changed for dinner; he was now wearing a wine-colored cloth, fastened with a polished slice out of a geode. “Why didn’t you appear inside?” I asked. “Why project yourself outside?”

Hollus’s eyestalks moved. There was something subtly different about the way he looked. Maybe it was just the lighting, from a halogen torchiere lamp; I was used to seeing him under the fluorescent panels we have at the museum.

“You invited me to your home,” he said.

“Yes, but—”

Suddenly, I felt his hand upon my arm. I’d touched him before, felt the static tingle of the force fields that composed his projection. This was different. His flesh was solid, warm.

“So I came,” he said. “But — I am sorry; I have been out there for a quarter of an hour, trying to figure out how to let you know that I had arrived. I had heard of doorbells, but could not find the button.”

“There isn’t one at the back door,” I said. My eyes were wide. “You’re here. In the flesh.”

“Yes.”

“But—” I peered behind him. There was something large in the backyard; I couldn’t quite make out its form in the gathering darkness.

“I have been studying your planet for a year,” Hollus said. “Surely you must have suspected we had ways to reach your planet’s surface without attracting undo attention.” He paused. “You invited me for dinner, did you not? I cannot enjoy your food via telepresence.”

I was amazed, thrilled. I turned to look at Susan, then realized I’d forgotten to introduce her. “Hollus, I’d like you to meet my wife, Susan Jericho.”

“Hell,” “oh,” said the Forhilnor.

Susan was quiet for a few seconds, stunned. Then she said, “Hello.”

“Thank you for allowing me to visit your home,” Hollus said.

Susan smiled, then looked rather pointedly at me. “If I’d had more advance notice, I could have cleaned the place up.”

“It is lovely as is,” said Hollus. His eyestalks swiveled, taking in the room. “Great care has obviously gone into the selection of each piece of furniture so that it complements the others.” Susan normally couldn’t stand spiders, but the big guy was clearly charming the pants off her.

In the bright light of the torchiere, I noticed tiny studs, like little diamonds, set into his bubble-wrap skin at each of the two joints in his limbs, and the three joints in his fingers. And a full row of them ran along each of his eyestalks. “Is that jewelry?” I said. “If I knew you were interested in such things, I’d have shown you the gem collections at the ROM. We’ve got some fabulous diamonds, rubies, and opals.”

“What?” said Hollus. And then, realizing, his eyestalks did their S-ripple again. “No, no, no. The crystals are the implants for the virtual-reality interface; they are what allow the telepresence simulacrum to mimic my moves.”

“Oh,” I said. I turned around and shouted out Ricky’s name. My son came bounding up the stairs from the basement. He started to head to the dining room, thinking I’d called him for dinner. But then he caught sight of me and Susan and Hollus. His eyes went wider than I’d ever seen them. He came over to me, and I put an arm around his shoulders.

“Hollus,” I said, “I’d like you to meet my son Rick.”

“Hell” “oh,” said Hollus.

I looked down at my boy. “Ricky, what do you say?”

Ricky’s eyes were still wide as he looked at the alien. “Cool!”

We hadn’t expected Hollus to show up for dinner in the flesh. Our dining-room table was a long rectangle, with a removable leaf in the middle. The table itself was dark wood, but it was covered with a white tablecloth. There really wasn’t much room for the Forhilnor. I had Susan help me move the sideboard out of the way to free up some space.

I realized I’d never seen Hollus sit down; his avatar obviously didn’t need to, but I thought the real Hollus might be more comfortable if he had some support. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?” I asked.

Hollus looked around. He spotted the ottoman in the living room, positioned in front of the love seat. “Could I use that?” he said. “The little stool?”

“Sure.”

Hollus moved into the living room. With a six-year-old boy around, we didn’t have any breakables out, which was a good thing. Hollus bumped the coffee table and the couch on his way; our furniture wasn’t spread out enough for a being of his proportions. He brought back the ottoman, placed it by the table, then stepped over it, so that his round torso was directly above the circular stool. He then lowered his torso down onto it. “There,” he said, sounding content.

Susan looked quite uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Hollus. I didn’t think you were actually, really coming. I have no idea whether what I made is something you can eat.”

“What did you make?”

“A salad — lettuce, cherry tomatoes, diced celery, bits of carrot, croutons, and an oil-and-vinegar dressing.”

“I can eat that.”

“And lamb chops.”

“They are cooked?”

Susan smiled. “Yes.”

“I can eat that, too, if you can provide me with about a liter of room-temperature water to go with it.”

“Certainly,” she said.

“I’ll get it,” I said. I went to the kitchen and filled a pitcher with tap water.

“I’ve also made milk shakes for Tom and Ricky.”

“This is the bovine mammary secretion?” asked Hollus.

“Yes.”

“If it is not rude to do so, I will not partake.”

I smiled, and Ricky, Susan, and I took our places at the table. Susan brought the salad bowl out and passed it to me. I used the serving forks to move some to my plate, then loaded some onto Ricky’s. I then put some on Hollus’s plate.

“I have brought my own utensils,” he said. “I hope that is not rude.”

“Not at all,” I said. Even after my trips to China, I was still one of those who always had to ask for a knife and fork in a Chinese restaurant. Hollus pulled two devices that looked a bit like corkscrews from the folds of the cloth wrapped around his torso.

“Do you say grace?” asked Hollus.

The question startled me. “Not normally.”

“I have seen it on television.”

“Some families do it,” I said. Those that have things to be thankful for.

Hollus used one of his corkscrews to stab some lettuce, and he conveyed it to the orifice on top of his circular body. I’d watched him make the motions of eating before, but had never seen him actually do it. It was a noisy process; his dentition made a snapping sound as it worked. I suppose only his speaking orifices were miked when he used his avatar; I presumed that was why I’d never heard the sound before.

“Is the salad okay?” I asked him.

Hollus continued to transfer it into his eating orifice while he spoke; I guessed that Forhilnors never choked to death while dining. “It is fine, thank you,” he said.

Ricky spoke up. “Why do you talk like that?” he asked. My son imitated Hollus by speaking in turns out of the left and right sides of his mouth. “It” “is” “fine” “thank” “you.”

“Ricky!” said Susan, embarrassed that our son had forgotten his manners.

But Hollus didn’t seem to mind the question. “One thing that humans and my people share is a divided brain,” he said. “You have a left and right hemisphere, and so do we. We hold that consciousness is the result of the interplay of the two hemispheres; I believe humans have some similar theories. In cases where the hemispheres have been severed due to injury, so that they function independently, whole sentences come out of a single speaking orifice, but much less complex thoughts are expressed.”

“Oh,” said Ricky, going back to his salad.

“That’s fascinating,” I said. Coordinating speech between partially autonomous brain halves must be difficult; maybe that was why Hollus was apparently incapable of using contractions. “I wonder if we had two mouths, whether humans would alternate words or syllables between them as well.”

“You seem to rely less on left-right integration than we Forhilnors do,” Hollus said. “I understand that in cases of a severed corpus callosum, humans can still walk.”

“I think that’s right, yes.”

“We cannot,” Hollus said. “Each half of the brain controls three legs, on the corresponding side of the body. All our legs have to work together, or we topple over, and—”

“My daddy is going to die,” said Ricky, looking down at his salad plate.

My heart jumped. Susan looked shocked.

Hollus put down his eating utensils. “Yes, he told me. I am very sorry about that.”

“Can you help him?” asked Ricky, looking now at the alien.

“I am sorry,” said Hollus. “There is nothing I can do.”

“But you’re from space and stuff,” said Ricky.

Hollus’s eyestalks stopped moving. “Yes, I am.”

“So you should know things.”

“I know some things,” he said. “But I do not know how to cure cancer. My own mother died from it.”

Ricky regarded the alien with great interest. He looked like he wanted to offer a word of comfort to the alien, but he clearly had no idea what to say.

Susan stood up and brought the lamb chops and mint jelly in from the kitchen.

We ate in silence.

I realized that an opportunity had presented itself that wasn’t likely to be repeated.

Hollus was here in the flesh.

After dinner, I asked him down to the den. He had some trouble negotiating the half-flight of stairs, but he managed.

I went to a two-drawer filing cabinet and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “It’s normal for people to write a document called a will to indicate how one’s personal effects should be distributed after death,” I said. “Naturally, I’m leaving almost everything to Susan and Ricky, although I’m also making some bequests to charities: the Canadian Cancer Society, the ROM, a couple of others. There are also a few things going to my brother, his children, and one or two other relatives.” I paused. “I — I’ve been thinking of amending my will to leave something to you, Hollus, but well, it seemed pointless. I mean, you won’t likely be around after I’m gone, and, well, usually you’re not really here, anyway. But tonight . . .”

“Tonight,” agreed Hollus, “it is the real me.”

I held out the sheaf of papers. “It’s probably simplest if I just give you this now. It’s the typescript for my book Canadian Dinosaurs. These days, people write books on computers, but that one was banged out on a manual typewriter. It doesn’t have any real value, and the information is now very much out of date, but it’s my little contribution to the popular literature about dinosaurs, and, well, I’d like you to have it — one paleontologist to another.” I shrugged a little. “Something to remember me by.”

The alien took the papers. His eyestalks weaved in and out. “Your family will not want this?”

“They have copies of the finished book.”

He unwrapped a portion of the cloth around his torso, revealing a large plastic carrying pouch. The manuscript pages fit in with room to spare. “Thank you,” he said.

There was silence between us. At last, I said, “No, Hollus — thank you. For everything.” And I reached out and touched the alien’s arm.