Calculating God

28

It was now 10:00 P.M. and traffic here, downtown, had dwindled to almost nothing. Hollus’s shuttle dropped silently from the sky, and landed not as it had the first time, out front of the planetarium, but rather behind the museum, along Philosopher’s Walk, a grassy U of T parkette that snaked from Varsity Stadium over toward Hart House. Although the shuttle’s descent had doubtless been observed by some, at least the ship wasn’t in open view from the street.

Christine Dorati had insisted on being here for the arrival of the aliens. We’d talked about the best way to handle security and had decided that simply keeping everything quiet made the most sense; if we asked for police or military support, that would have just drawn crowds. By this late date, we only had a handful of nut cases hanging around the museum, and none were ever seen this late at night — it was public knowledge that Hollus and I kept normal business hours.

Things had been strained between us ever since Christine had tried to oust me, but I rather suspected, looking at me today, that she knew the end was getting near regardless. I still avoided mirrors, but I could see the reactions other people were having to me: the forced, insincere comments about me looking well, looking fit, the handshakes that were free of pressure, lest my bones might shatter, the involuntary ever-so-slight shaking of heads as people who hadn’t seen me for weeks caught sight of my current state. Christine was going to get her way soon enough.

We’d watched the shuttle land while standing in the alleyway between the ROM and planetarium; Philosopher’s Walk was not the sort of place you wanted to hang around after dark. Hollus, a second Forhilnor, and two Wreeds quickly emerged from the black, wedge-shaped ship. Hollus was wearing the same bright-blue winding cloth she’d worn when we first met; the other Forhilnor was clad in a black-and-gold cloth. All four aliens were carrying pieces of elaborate-looking equipment. I walked over to greet them, then quickly hustled the group down the alleyway and into the museum through the staff entrance. That entrance was at street level, which really was the museum’s basement (the main public entrance had all those outdoor steps leading up to it, putting it really most of a story above street level). A security guard was on duty there, reading a magazine instead of looking at the constantly changing black-and-white images from the security cameras.

“Better turn off the alarms,” said Christine to the guard. “If we’ve got to be in here all night, I’m sure we’ll be wandering around to various parts of the building.” The guard nodded and pushed some buttons on a console in front of him.

We headed into the museum, most of which was dark. The Wreeds were both wearing yellow utility belts like the ones I’d seen before, but they were also wearing something else: strange harnesses that crisscrossed between their four arms. “What’s that?” I asked Hollus, pointing at one of them.

“A repulsor-field generator; it helps them walk around here. The gravity on Earth is higher than that on the Wreed homeworld.”

We took the elevator up to the first floor — it took two carloads to transport everyone, as only one Forhilnor could fit in at a time. I went with the first group; Hollus, who had seen me operate elevators repeatedly came up in the second (she had said getting Wreeds to understand that floors might be represented by numbers would have taken too long to explain). The two Wreeds were particularly impressed by the giant totem poles made of western red cedar. They quickly scooted all the way up to the third floor on the staircases that wrapped around the poles, then returned to the main floor. I then led everyone across the Rotunda to the Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall. As we walked along, Hollus had both mouths going a mile a minute, singing in her native language. She was presumably playing tour guide to the other Forhilnor and the Wreeds.

I was intrigued by the second Forhilnor, whose name, I was told, was Barbulkan. He was larger than Hollus and had one discolored limb.

The locks were at the bases of the double glass doors. I bent over, grunting as I did so, used my key to unlock them, then pulled the doors until they clicked into their open positions. I then stepped in and turned on the lights. The others followed me into the hall. The two Wreeds conferred quietly. After a few moments they seemed to reach an agreement. Of course, they didn’t have to turn to talk to somebody behind them, but one of them was obviously now saying something to Hollus: it made rock-grinding sounds, which, a moment later, were translated into the musical Forhilnor language.

Hollus moved over to stand next to me. “They are ready to set up the equipment for the first case.”

I moved forward and used another key on the display case, unlocking the angled glass cover and swinging it up. The hinge locked into place at the maximally open position. There was no chance of the glass sheet coming crashing down while people worked inside — museums might not have always taken appropriate precautions to safeguard their employees in the past, but they did do so now.

The scanner consisted of a large metal stand with a dozen or so complex-looking articulated arms coming off it, each one ending in a translucent sphere about the size of a softball. One of the Wreeds was working on deploying the arms — some above the case, some below, more on either side — while the other Wreed made numerous adjustments to an illuminated control panel attached to the supporting stand. He seemed displeased with the results being displayed, and continued to fiddle with the controls.

“It is delicate work,” said Hollus. Her compatriot stood silently next to her. “Scanning at this resolution demands a minimum of vibrations.” She paused. “I hope we will not have problems with the subway trains.”

“They’ll stop running for the night soon,” Christine said. “And although you can feel the trains go by downstairs in the Theatre ROM, I’ve never really noticed them making the rest of the museum vibrate.”

“We will probably be fine,” said Hollus. “But we should also refrain from using the elevator while the scans are being made.”

The other Forhilnor sang something, and Hollus said, “Excuse us,” to Christine and me. The two of them scuttled across the gallery and helped move another piece of equipment. It was clear that operating the scanner wasn’t Hollus’s field, but she was useful as an extra set of hands.

“Extraordinary, said Christine, looking at the aliens milling about the gallery.

I wasn’t inclined to make small talk with her, but, well, she was my boss. “Aren’t they?” I said, without much feeling.

“You know,” she said, “I never really believed in aliens. I mean, I know what you biologists say: there’s nothing special about the Earth, there should be life everywhere, yatitty-yatitty-ya. But still, down deep, I thought we were alone in the universe.”

I decided not to contradict her about whether there was anything special about out planet. “I’m glad they’re here,” I said. “I’m glad they came to visit us.”

Christine yawned expansively — quite a sight with her horsey mouth, although she tried to hide it behind the back of her hand. It was getting late — and we’d only just begun. “Sorry,” she said when she was done. “I just wish there was some way to get Hollus to do some public programming here. We could—”

At that moment, Hollus rejoined us. “They are ready to do the first scan,” she said. “The equipment will run on its own, and it would be better if we all left the room to avoid vibrations.”

I nodded, and the six of us headed out into the Rotunda. “How long will the scan take?”

“About forty-three minutes for the first case,” said Hollus.

“Well,” said Christine, “no point just standing around. Why don’t we go have a look at some Far Eastern artifacts?” Those galleries were also on the first floor, rather close to our current location.

Hollus spoke to the three other aliens, presumably to get their consent. “That would be fine,” she said, turning back to us.

I let Christine take the lead; it was her museum, after all. We crossed the Rotunda diagonally again, passed the totem poles, and entered the T. T. Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art (named for the Hong Kong businessperson whose donation had made them possible); the ROM had the finest collection of Chinese artifacts in the western world. We passed through the galleries, with their cases full of ceramics, bronzes, and jades, and entered the Chinese Tomb area. For decades, the tomb had been located outside, exposed to Toronto’s weather, but now it was here, on the first floor of the ROM’s terrace galleries. The outside wall was glass, looking out on a slick, wet Bloor Street; a Pizza Hut and McDonald’s faced in from the other side of the road. The roof was tented skylights; raindrops beat against them.

The tomb components — two giant arches, two stone camels, two giant human figures, and the huge tumulus dome — had no velvet ropes around them. The other Forhilnor, Barbulkan, reached out to touch the carvings on the nearer archway with his six-fingered hand. I imagined that if you did a lot of work via telepresence, getting to really touch things with your own flesh-and-blood fingers was a special thrill.

“These tomb pieces,” said Christine, standing by one of the stone camels, “were purchased by the museum in 1919 and 1920 from George Crofts, a British fur trader and art dealer stationed in Tianjin. They supposedly come from the tomb complex at Fengtaizhuang in Hebei province and are said to belong to the famous Ming-dynasty general Zu Dashou, who died in 1656 AD.”

The aliens murmured among themselves. They were clearly fascinated; maybe they didn’t build monuments to their own dead.

“Chinese society at this time was shaped by the idea that the universe was a highly ordered place,” continued Christine. “The tomb and tomb figures here reflect this idea of a structured cosmos, and—”

At first I thought it was thunder.

But that wasn’t it.

A sound was ripping through the tomb area, echoing loudly off the stone walls.

A sound I’d only ever heard before on TV and in the movies.

The sound of rapid gunfire.

Foolishly, we ran from the tomb toward the sound. The Forhilnors easily outpaced us humans, and the Wreeds brought up the rear. We hurried through the T. T. Tsui Galleries and out into the darkened Rotunda.

The sound was coming from the Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall — from the Burgess Shale exhibit. I couldn’t imagine who was being shot at: besides the security guard at the staff entrance, we were the only people in the building.

Christine had a cellular phone with her; she’d already flipped it open and was presumably dialing 9-1-1. Another volley of gunfire split the air, and here, closer, I was able to discern an additional, more familiar sound: rock shattering. I suddenly realized what was happening. Somebody was shooting at the priceless, half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale fossils.

The gunfire stopped just as the Wreeds were arriving in the Rotunda. We had hardly been quiet: Christine was talking into her cellular, our footfalls had echoed in the galleries, and the Wreeds, utterly mystified — maybe they had never developed projectile weapons — were chatting animatedly to each other despite my attempts to shush them.

Even partially deafened by the sound of their own gunfire, the people shooting up the fossils evidently heard the sounds we had made. First one and then another emerged from the Exhibition Hall. The one who came out first was covered with wood chips and rock fragments, and he was holding some sort of semiautomatic weapon — a submachine gun, maybe. He aimed it at us.

That, at last, was enough to get us to do the sensible thing. We froze. But I glanced over at Christine and made a questioning face, silently asking whether she’d gotten through to the 9-1-1 operator. She nodded yes, and tipped the case of her cellular just enough so that I could see by its glowing faceplate that she was still connected. Thank God the emergency operator had had the good sense to fall silent as soon as Christine had.

“Holy God,” said the man holding the gun. He half turned to face his younger partner, who had a crew cut. “Holy God, will you look at them things?” He had an accent from the southern U.S.

“Aliens,” said the man with the crew cut, as if trying on the word for size; he had a similar accent. Then, a moment later, deciding that the word indeed fit, he said it again, more forcefully. “Aliens.”

I took a half-step forward. “They’re projections, of course,” I said. “They’re not really here.”

The Forhilnors and Wreeds might have different ways from humans, but at least they weren’t fool enough to contradict me.

“Who are you?” asked the man with the gun. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m Thomas Jericho,” I said. “I’m the head of the paleobiology department here at” — I raised my voice as much as I dared, hoping the 9-1-1 operator would pick up my words, in case Christine hadn’t yet conveyed to him or her where we were — “the Royal Ontario Museum.” Of course, by this point the museum’s own overnight security guard must have realized something was up and had presumably also called the cops.

“No one should be here this time of night,” said the man with the crew cut.

“We were taking some photographs,” I said. “We wanted to do it when the museum was empty.”

Maybe twenty meters separated our group from the two of them. There might have been a third or fourth intruder inside the exhibit hall, but I’d seen no sign of that.

“What, may I ask, are you doing?” asked Christine.

“Who are you?” asked the man with the gun.

“Dr. Christine Dorati. I’m the director of the museum. What are you doing?”

The two men looked at each other. The guy with the crew cut shrugged. “We’re destroying those lying fossils.” He looked at the aliens. “You aliens, y’all have come to Earth, but you’re listening to the wrong people. These scientists” — he almost spat the word — “are lying to you, with their fossils and all. This world is six thousand years old, the Lord created it in just six days, and we are his chosen people.”

“Oh, God,” I said, invoking the entity they believed in but I did not. I looked at Christine. “Creationists.”

The man with the submachine gun was growing impatient. “Enough,” he said. He aimed the gun at Christine. “Drop that phone.”

She did so; it hit the marble floor with a clang and its flip-down mouthpiece broke free.

“We came here to do a job of work,” said the man with the gun. “Y’all are going to lie down on the ground, and I’m going to finish that work. Cooter, cover them.” He returned to the gallery.

The other man reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pistol. He aimed it at us. “Y’all heard the man,” he said. “Lie down.”

Christine lowered herself to the ground. Hollus and the other Forhilnor hunkered down in a way I’d never seen before, lowering their spherical torsos enough that they touched the floor. The two Wreeds just stood there, either baffled or perhaps physiologically incapable of lying down.

And I did not lie down, either. I was terrified — no doubt about it. My heart was pounding, and I could feel sweat on my forehead. But these fossils were priceless, dammitall — among the most important in the entire world. And I was the one who had arranged for them to all be on public display in one place.

I took a step forward. “Please,” I said.

More staccato gunfire from inside the gallery. It was almost as if the bullets were tearing into me; I could picture the shales shattering, the remains of Opabinia and Wiwaxia and Anomalocaris and Canadia that had survived 500 million years exploding into clouds of dust.

“Don’t,” I said, genuine pleading in my voice. “Don’t do that.”

“Stay back,” said the short-haired man. “You just stay where you are.”

I took in air through my mouth; I didn’t want to die — but I was going to, regardless. Whether it happened tonight or a few months from now, it was going to happen. I took another step forward. “If you believe in the Bible,” I said, “then you’ve got to believe in the Ten Commandments. And one of them” — I knew I’d have made a more convincing argument if I’d known which one — “says ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ ” I took another couple of steps toward him. “You may want to destroy those fossils, but I can’t believe that you’d kill me.”

“I will,” said the man.

More bursts of gunfire, counterpointed by the sounds of breaking glass and shattering rock. My chest felt like it was going to explode. “No,” I said, “you won’t. God wouldn’t forgive you for that.”

He jabbed the gun in my direction; we were maybe fifteen meters apart. “I’ve already killed,” he said. It sounded like a confession, and there was what seemed to be genuine anguish in his voice. “That clinic; that doctor . . .”

More gunfire, echoing and reverberating.

My God, I thought. The abortion-clinic bombers . . .

I swallowed deeply. “That was an accident,” I said, guessing. “You can’t shoot me in cold blood.”

“I’ll do it,” said the man the other one had called Cooter. “So help me, I’ll do it. Now you stay back!”

If only Hollus weren’t here in the flesh. If she were present as her holographic projection, she could manipulate solid object without having to worry about being harmed by the bullets. But she was all too real, and all too vulnerable — as were the other extraterrestrials.

Suddenly, I became conscious of the sound of sirens growing closer and closer, barely audible here, inside the museum. Cooter must have heard them, too. He turned his head and called out to his partner, “The cops!”

The other man reemerged from the temporary-exhibitions gallery. I wondered how many of the fossils he’d managed to destroy. He cocked his head, listening. At first he didn’t seem to be able to hear the sirens; doubtless the gunfire still echoed in his ears. But a moment later he nodded and gestured with his submachine gun for us to start moving. Christine got to her feet; the two Forhilnors lifted their torsos off the ground.

“We’re getting out of here,” said the man. “Each of you put your hands up.”

I lifted my arms; so did Christine. Hollus and the other Forhilnor exchanged a glance, then each lifted their two arms, as well. The Wreeds followed suit a moment later, each lifting all four arms and splaying all twenty-three fingers. The man who wasn’t Cooter — he was taller and older than Cooter — ushered us farther into the darkened Rotunda. From there we had a clear view out the glass-doored vestibule. Five uniformed Emergency Task Force officers were beetling up the outside stairs to the museum’s glass entrance. Two were brandishing heavy guns. One had a bullhorn. “This is the police,” called that cop, the sound distorted as it passed through the two layers of glass. “We have the building surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

The man with the submachine gun gestured for us to keep moving. The four aliens were bringing up the rear, forming a wall between us humans on the inside and the police on the outside. I wished now that I hadn’t told Hollus to land her shuttle out back on Philosopher’s Walk. If the cops had seen the shuttle, they might have realized that the aliens weren’t the holographic projections they’d read about in the newspapers but instead were the real thing. As it stood, some hotshot might assume that he could pick off the two armed men standing behind the aliens by shooting through the projections.

We made it out of the Rotunda, up the four steps to the marble landing between the two stairwells, each with its central totem pole, and then —

And then everything went to hell.

Coming quietly up the stairwell on our right from the basement was a uniformed ETF officer, wearing a bulletproof vest and brandishing an assault weapon. The cops had cleverly made a public stand outside the main entrance while sending a contingent up through the staff entrance from the alleyway between the ROM and the planetarium.

“J. D.,”shouted the man with the buzz cut, catching sight of the cop, “look!”

J. D. swung his gun and opened fire. The cop was blown backward, down the wide stone steps, his bulletproof vest being put to the test as it erupted in numerous places, bleeding out white fabric stuffing.

While J. D. was distracted, the cops on the front steps had somehow opened one door — the one at the far left, as they faced it, the one that was designed for wheelchair access; perhaps the ROM security guard had given them the key. Two cops, safe behind riot shields, were now inside the vestibule. The inner doors didn’t lock — there was no need for that. One of the officers reached forward and must have touched the red button that operated the door for handicapped patrons. It swung slowly open. The cops were silhouetted by streetlamps and the revolving red lights of their vehicles out on the street.

“Stop where you are,” shouted J. D. across the Rotunda, its wide diameter separating our motley group from the cops. “We have hostages.”

The cop with the bullhorn was one of those now inside, and he felt compelled to keep using it. “We know the aliens aren’t real,” he said, his words reverberating in the darkened, domed Rotunda. “Put your hands up and come out.”

J. D. jerked his large gun at me. “Tell them who you are.”

With the shape my lungs were in, it was hard for me to shout, but I cupped my hands around my mouth and did the best I could. “I’m Thomas Jericho,” I said. “I’m a curator here.” I pointed at Christine. “This is Christine Dorati. She’s the museum’s director and president.”

J. D. shouted. “We get safe passage out of here, or these two die.”

The two cops hunkered down behind their riot shields. After a few moments of consultation, the bullhorn erupted again. “What are your terms?”

Even I knew he was stalling. Cooter looked first at the southern staircase, which led up, and then at the northern staircase, which led both up and down. He must have thought he saw something move — it could have been a mouse; a giant, old building like the museum has plenty of them. He fired a shot down the northern staircase. It hit the stone steps, jagged shards went flying, and —

And one of them hit Barbulkan, the second Forhilnor —

And Barbulkan’s left mouth made a sound like “Ooof!” and his right mouth went “Hup!”

And a carnation of bright-red blood exploded from one of his legs, and a flap of bubble-wrap skin hung loose from where the stone fragment had hit —

And Cooter said, “Holy God!”

And J. D. turned around, and he said, “Sweet Jesus.”

And they both apparently realized it at the same moment. The aliens weren’t projections; they weren’t holograms.

They were real.

And suddenly they knew they had the most valuable hostages in the history of the world.

J. D. stepped backward, moving behind the group; he’d apparently realized he’d been insufficiently covering the four aliens. “Are you all real?” he said.

The aliens were silent. My heart was jumping. J. D. aimed his submachine gun at the left leg of one of the Wreeds. “One burst from this gun will blow your leg right off.” He let this sink in for a moment. “I ask again, are you real?”

Hollus spoke up. “They” “are” “real.” “We” “all” “are.” A satisfied smile spread across J. D.’s face. He shouted to the police. “The aliens aren’t projections,” he said. “They’re real. We’ve got six hostages here. I want all of you cops to withdraw. At the first sign of any trick, I will kill one of the hostages — and it won’t be a human.”

“You don’t want to be a murderer,” called the cop over the megaphone.

“I won’t be a murderer,” J. D. shouted back. “Murder is the killing of another human being. You won’t be able to find anything to charge me with. Now, withdraw fully and completely, or these aliens die.”

“One hostage will do as well as six,” called the same cop. “Let five of them go, and we’ll talk.”

J. D. and Cooter looked at each other. Six hostages was an unwieldy group; they might have an easier time controlling the situation if they didn’t have to worry about so many. On the other hand, by having the six form a circle, with J. D. and Cooter at the center, they could be protected from sharpshooters firing from just about any direction.

“No way,” shouted J. D. “You guys — you’re like a SWAT team, right? So you must have come here in a van or truck. We want you to back off, far away from the museum, leaving that van with its motor running and the keys in it. We’ll drive it to the airport, along with as many of the aliens as will fit, and we want a plane waiting there to take us” — he faltered “well, to take us wherever we decide to go.”

“We can’t do that,” said the cop through his megaphone.

J. D. shrugged a little. “I will kill one hostage sixty seconds from now, if y’all are still here.” He turned to the man with the crew cut. “Cooter?”

Cooter nodded, looked at his watch, and started counting down. “Sixty. Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.”

The cop with the bullhorn turned around and spoke to someone behind him. I could see him pointing, presumable indicating the direction to which his force should withdraw on foot.

“Fifty-six. Fifty-five. Fifty-four.”

Hollus’s eyestalks had stopped weaving in and out and had instead locked at their maximum separation. I’d seen her do that before when she had heard something that interested her. Whatever it was, I hadn’t heard it yet.

“Fifty-two. Fifty-one. Fifty.”

The cops were moving out of the glass vestibule, but they were making a lot of noise about it. The one with the bullhorn kept speaking. “All right,” he said. “All right. We’re withdrawing.” His magnified voice echoed through the Rotunda. “We’re backing away.”

It seemed to me he was talking unnecessarily, but —

But then I heard the sound Hollus had heard: a faint rumbling. The elevator, to our left, was descending in its shaft; someone had called it down to the lower level. The cop with the bullhorn was deliberately trying to drown out the sound.

“Forty-one. Forty. Thirty-nine.”

It would be suicide, I thought, for whoever would get in the car; J. D. could blow away the occupant as soon as the metal doors split down the middle and started to slide away.

“Thirty-one. Thirty. Twenty-nine.”

“We’re leaving,” shouted the cop. “We’re going.”

The elevator was coming back up now. Above the doors was a row of square indicator lights — B, 1, 2, 3 — indicating which floor the car was currently on. I dared steal a glance at it. The “1” had just winked out, and, a moment later, the “2” lit up. Brilliant! Either whoever was in the elevator had known about the balconies on the second floor, overlooking the Rotunda, or else the ROM’s own security guard, who must have let the police in, had told him.

“Eighteen. Seventeen. Sixteen.”

As the “2” lit up, I did my part to muffle the sound of the elevator doors opening by coughing loudly; if there was one thing I did well these days, it was cough.

The “2” was staying lit; the doors must have opened by now, but J. D. and Cooter hadn’t heard them. Still, presumably one or more armed cops had now exited onto the second floor — the one that housed the Dinosaur and Discovery Galleries.

“Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.”

“All right,” called the ETF officer with the megaphone. “All right. We’re leaving.” At this distance I couldn’t tell if he was making eye contact with the officers on the darkened balcony. We were still by the elevator; I didn’t dare tip my eyes up, lest I give away the presence of the people on the floor above.

“Nine. Eight. Seven.”

The cops moved out of the vestibule, exiting into the dark night. I watched them sink from view as they headed down the stone steps to the sidewalk.

“Six. Five. Four.”

The red lights from the roofs of the cruisers that had been sweeping through the Rotunda started to pull away; one set of lights — presumably from the ETF van — continued to rotate.

“Three. Two. One.”

I looked at Christine. She nodded almost imperceptibly; she knew what was happening, too.

“Zero!” said Cooter.

“All, right,” said J. D. “Let’s move out.”

I’d spent much of the last seven months worrying about what it was going to be like to die — but I hadn’t thought that I would see someone else die before I did. My heart was pounding like the jackhammers we use to break up overburden. J. D., I figured, had only seconds to live.

He arranged us in a semicircle, as if we were a biological shield for him and Cooter. “Move,” he said, and although my back was to him I was sure he was swinging his large gun left and right, preparing to fire in an arc if need be.

I started walking forward; Christine, the Forhilnors, and the Wreeds followed suit. We stepped out from under the overhang that shielded the area by the elevator, went down the four steps into the Rotunda proper, and started crossing the wide marble floor leading toward the entryway.

I swear I felt the splash against my bald head first, and only then heard the deafening shot from above. I swung around. It was difficult to make out what I was seeing; the only light in the Rotunda was what was spilling in from the George Weston gallery and from the street through the glass-doored vestibule and the stained-glass windows above it. J. D.’s head was open, like a melon, and blood had gone everywhere, including onto me and the aliens. His corpse jerked forward, toward me, and his submachine gun went skittering across the floor.

A second shot rang out almost on top of the first, but it hadn’t quite been synchronized; perhaps in the darkened balcony above, the two officers — there seemed to be at least that many up there — hadn’t been able to see each other. Short-haired Cooter moved his head just in time, and he was suddenly diving forward, trying to retrieve J. D.’s gun.

A Wreed was in the way; Cooter knocked him over. With the alien splayed out and flailing around, the sharpshooters apparently couldn’t clearly see Cooter.

I was in shock; I could feel J. D.’s blood dripping down to my neck. Suddenly the Wreed who was still standing flew up into the air. I knew it had been wearing a device to help it walk comfortably under Earth’s gravity; I hadn’t realized that it was strong enough to let him fly.

The other Forhilnor kicked the large gun, sending it spinning farther out into the Rotunda. Cooter continued to scramble toward it. The Wreed who had fallen was pulling himself to his feet. Meanwhile, the flying Wreed had now risen three meters off the ground.

Cooter had made it to the gun and rolled onto his side, shooting up into the darkened balconies. He pumped the trigger repeatedly, spraying out an arc of lead. The bullets hit ninety-year-old stone carvings, sending debris raining down upon us.

The other Wreed took to the air as well. I tried to get behind one of the freestanding wall segments that partially defined the edges of the Rotunda. Hollus was moving quickly — but going in the opposite direction, and soon, to my astonishment, she had reached the taller of the two totem poles. She flexed her six legs and leapt the short distance from the staircase onto the pole, wrapping her various limbs about it. And then she started shimmying at a great clip up the totem. Soon she was out of sight; she could go all the way to the third floor. I was glad she was apparently safe.

“All right,” shouted Cooter in his accented voice, as he aimed the submachine gun at Christine, the second Forhilnor, and me in turn. His voice was edged with panic. “All right, y’all. Nobody move.”

There were cops back in the vestibule now, cops up on the balcony, two Wreeds flying around the Rotunda like crazed angels, one Forhilnor standing on one side of me, Christine standing on the other, and the corpse of J. D. exsanguinating all over the marble starburst of the Rotunda’s floor, making it slick.

“Give it up,” said Christine to Cooter. “Can’t you see you’re surrounded?”

“Shut up!” shouted Cooter. He was clearly at a loss without J.D. “Just shut the hell up.”

And then, to my astonishment, I heard a familiar two-toned bleep. The holoform projector, which, as always, I had in a pocket, was signaling that it was about to come on.

Cooter had backed under the overhang of the balcony; he could no longer see the sharpshooters, meaning they could no longer see him. An image of Hollus wavered into existence, full-blown, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Cooter turned around; he was panicked and didn’t seem to notice that the missing Forhilnor had suddenly rejoined us.

“Cooter,” said the Hollus simulacrum, boldly stepping forward. “My name is Hollus.” Cooter immediately aimed the submachine gun at her, but the Forhilnor continued to close the distance between them. We all started falling back. I could see that the police in the vestibule were confused; Hollus had apparently interposed himself between them and Cooter. “You have not shot anyone yet,” said Hollus, the words like the beating of twin hearts. “You saw what happened to your associate; do not let the same fate befall you.”

I made motions with my hands that I hoped the others could see in the dark: I wanted them to fan out so that none of us were along the same line that connected Cooter and Hollus.

“Give me the weapon,” said Hollus. She was now four meters from Cooter. “Relinquish it and we will all depart from here alive.”

“Back off!” cried Cooter.

Hollus continued to approach. “Give me the weapon,” she said again.

Cooter shook his head violently. “All we wanted to do was show you aliens that what these scientists were telling you wasn’t the truth.”

“I understand that,” said Hollus, taking another step forward. “And I will gladly listen to you. Just give me the weapon.”

“I know you believe in God,” said Cooter. “But you haven’t yet been saved.”

“I will listen to anything you wish to say,” said Hollus, inching forward, “but only after you relinquish the weapon.”

“Make all the cops leave,” said Cooter.

“They are not going to leave.” Another six-legged increment toward the man.

“Don’t come any closer, or I’ll shoot,” said Cooter.

“You do not want to shoot anyone,” said Hollus, still advancing, “least of all a fellow believer.”

“I swear I’ll kill you.”

“You will not,” said Hollus, closing the gap even more.

“Stay back! I’m warning you!”

The six round feet moved forward again. “God forgive me,” said Cooter and —

— and he squeezed the trigger.

And bullets erupted from the gun —

And they entered the Hollus simulacrum —

And the force fields that composed the simulated body slowed the bullets down, retarding their motion more and more, until they emerged from the other side. They continued to fly across the Rotunda, traveling another two meters or so in parabolic paths that brought them clattering to the stone floor.

The simulacrum moved forward, reaching out with its force-field arms to grab the submachine gun by the muzzle, which surely was now so hot that no flesh-and-blood being could have managed to hold it.

The real Hollus, upstairs, presumably on the third floor, yanked her arms back, and her simulacrum, down here in the lobby, yanked its arms back, too. And Cooter, startled that the being he’d just filled with bullets was not dead, let go of the gun. The avatar spun around and quickly retreated.

The police surged in through the vestibule and —

It was unnecessary now. Totally unnecessary.

One of the cops squeezed off a round.

And Cooter staggered backward, his mouth a wide, perfect “O” of surprise. He hit a wall segment and slumped down in the dark, a trail of blood like a claw mark following him to the floor.

And his head lolled to one side.

And he went to meet his maker.