Robert Sawyer - Calculating God

“Hell” “oh,” said Hollus.

The boy smiled, apparently delighted to hear the alien speak. “Hello,” he said back at us, slowly and deliberately.

A breathless woman rounded the corner, joining us in the Hadrosaur room. She let out a little yelp at the sight of Hollus and hurried over to the boy, taking his soft, chubby hand. “Eddie!” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you.” She turned to us. “I’m sorry if he was disturbing you.”

Hollus said, “He” “was” “not.”

The P.A. came on. “Ladies and gentlemen, the museum is now closed. Would all patrons please immediately go to the front exit . . .”

The woman pulled Eddie, who kept looking back over his shoulder at us, down through the rest of the Dinosaur Gallery.

Hollus turned to me. “That child was unlike any I have seen.”

“He has Down syndrome,” I said. “It retards mental and physical development.”

“What causes it?”

“The presence of an extra chromosome twenty-one; all chromosomes should come in pairs, but sometimes a third one gets mixed in.”

Hollus’s eyestalks moved. “We have a similar condition, although it is almost always screened for in the womb. In our case, a chromosome pair forms without telomeres at one end; the two strands join at that end, making a chromosome twice as long as normal. The result is a complete loss of linguistic ability, many spatial-perception difficulties, and an early death.” He paused. “Still, the resilience of life amazes me. It is remarkable that something as significant as an entire extra chromosome, or two chromosomes joining into one, does not prevent the organism from functioning.” Hollus was still looking in the direction the child had disappeared. “That boy,” he said. “Will his life be cut short, too?”

“Probably. Down syndrome has that effect.”

“That is sad,” said Hollus.

I was quiet for a time. There was a little alcove to one side of the room in which an ancient slide show was playing about how dinosaur fossils form and are excavated. I’d heard its soundtrack a million times, of course. Finally, though, it ended, and since no one had pushed the big red button to start it again, Hollus and I were alone in the silent gallery, only the skeletons for company.

“Hollus,” I said at last.

The Forhilnor turned his attention back to me. “Yes?”

“How — how long are you planning to stay here? I mean, how much longer will you need my help?”

“I am sorry,” said Hollus. “I have been inconsiderate. If I am taking up too much of your time, merely say so and I shall go.”

“No, no, no. It’s nothing like that. I’m enjoying this immensely, believe me. But . . .” I blew out air.

“Yes?” said the alien.

“I have something to tell you,” I said at last.

“Yes?”

I took another deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m telling you this because you have a right to know,” I said, pausing again, wondering how to continue. “I know that when you came to the museum, you simply asked to see a paleontologist — any paleontologist. You didn’t seek me out in particular. Indeed, you could have gone to a different museum — Phil Currie at the Tyrrell or Mike Brett-Surman at the Smithsonian would have loved to have had you show up on their doorsteps.”

I fell silent. Hollus continued to look at me patiently.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have told you this earlier.” I inhaled again, held the air in as long as I could. “Hollus, I’m dying.”

The alien repeated the word, as though somehow he’d missed it in his study of English. “Dying?”

“I have incurable cancer. I have only a matter of months to live.”

Hollus went silent for several seconds. Then his left mouth said, “I,” but nothing more came for a time. At last, he started again. “Is it permissible to express regret at such a circumstance?”

I nodded.

“I” “am” “sorry,” said his mouths. He was silent for a few seconds. “My own mother died of cancer; it is a terrible disease.”

I certainly couldn’t argue with that. “I know you still have a lot of research to do,” I said. “If you’d prefer to work with somebody else, I’ll understand.”

“No,” said Hollus. “No. We are a team.”

I felt my chest constricting. “Thank you,” I said.

Hollus looked at me a moment longer, then gestured at the wall-mounted hadrosaurs, the reason we’d come down here. “Please, Tom,” he said. That was the first time he’d ever called me by my first name. “Let us continue with our work.”

Whenever I encountered a new lifeform on Earth, I tried to imagine its ancestors — an occupational hazard, I guess. The same thing happened when Hollus finally introduced me to a Wreed; Wreeds were apparently shy, but I asked to meet one as part of the payment for examining our collections.

We used the conference room on the fifth floor of the Curatorial Centre; again, a series of video cameras were set up to record the event. I placed the holoform projector on the long mahogany table, next to the speaker phone. Hollus sang to it in his language, and suddenly there was a second alien in the room.

Humans, of course, evolved from fishes; our arms were originally pectoral fins (and our fingers originally the supporting bones that gave those fins stiffness), and our legs started out as pelvic fins.

Wreeds almost certainly started out as an aquatic form, as well. The Wreed that stood before me had two legs, but four arms, equally spaced around the top of a torso shaped like an inverted pear. But the four arms perhaps traced ancestry back not just to pectoral fins but also to asymmetrical dorsal and ventral fins. Those ancient pectoral fins had perhaps had four stiffening struts, for the left and right hands now had four fingers apiece (two central fingers and two mutually opposable thumbs). The front hand — presumably derived from the ventral fin — had nine fingers. And the back hand, which I supposed had descended from a dorsal fin, had, when I finally got a look at it, six thick fingers.

The Wreed had no head, and, as far as I could tell, it didn’t have eyes or a nose, either. There was a glossy black strip running around the circumference of the upper torso; I had no idea what it was for. And there were areas with complicated folding of skin on either side of the front and back arms; I guessed that these might be ears.

Wreed skin was covered with the same material that had evolved on Earth in many spiders and insects, all mammals, a few birds, and even a few ancient reptiles: hair. There was about a centimeter of reddish-brown fur covering most of the Wreed’s upper torso and the arms down to the elbows; the lower torso, the forearms, and the legs were naked, showing blue-gray leathery skin.

The only clothing the Wreed wore was a wide belt that encircled the narrow lower part of its torso; it was held up by the being’s knobby hips. The belt reminded me of Batman’s utility belt — it was even the same bright yellow, and it was lined with what I presumed were storage pouches. Instead of the bat emblem on the buckle, though, it sported a bright red pinwheel.

“Thomas Jericho,” said Hollus, “this is T’kna.”

“Hello,” I said. “Welcome to Earth.”

Wreeds, like humans, used a single orifice for speaking and eating; the mouth was located in a depression at the top of the torso. For several seconds T’kna made noises that sounded like rocks banging around inside a clothes dryer. Once the mouth stopped moving, there was a brief silence, then a deep, synthesized voice emerged from the thing’s belt. It said: “Is one animate to speak as for the inanimate?”

I looked at Hollus, baffled by the Wreed’s words. “Animate for the inanimate?” I said.