Robert Sawyer - Calculating God

“Wouldn’t you rather be spending your time with Suzanne and Rich — Ricky?”

“Susan has her own job, and Ricky’s in grade one; he’s in school full days.”

“Still, Tom, I think . . . Isn’t it time you faced facts? You’re not able to bring a hundred percent to your job anymore. Isn’t it time you took some leave?”

I was in pain, as always, and that just made it harder to control my temper. “I don’t want to take any leave,” I said. “I want to work. Damn it, Christine, my oncologist says it’s good for me to be coming to work every day.”

Christine shook her head, as if saddened that I was unable to see the big picture. “Tom, I’ve got to think of what’s best for the museum.” She took a deep breath. “You must know Lillian Kong.”

“Of course.”

“Well, you know that she quit as curator of fossil vertebrates at the Canadian Museum of Nature to—”

“To protest government cutbacks in spending on museums; yes, I know. She went to Indiana University.”

“Exactly. But I’ve heard through the grapevine that she’s not happy there, either. I think I could entice her to join us here at the ROM, if I move quickly. I know the Museum of the Rockies wants her, too, so she’s certainly not going to be available for long, and . . .”

She trailed off, waiting for me to complete her thought for her. I crossed my arms in front of my chest but said nothing. She looked disappointed that she’d have to spell it out. “And, well, Tom, you are going to be leaving us.”

A tired old joke drifted through my mind: Old curators never die; they just become part of their collections. “I can still do useful work.”

“The chances of me being able to get someone as qualified as Kong a year from now are slim.”

Lillian Kong was a damn fine paleontologist; she’d done some amazing work on ceratopsians and had received enormous amounts of press, including being on the cover of Newsweek and Maclean’s for her contributions to the dinosaur-bird controversy. But, like Christine, she was a dumb-downer: the Canadian Museum of Nature’s displays had become cloyingly populist, and not very informative, under her. She’d doubtless be an ally in Christine’s desire to make the ROM into an “attraction,” and indeed would agree to put pressure on Hollus to do public programming, something I’d steadfastly refused to do.

“Christine, don’t make me go.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t necessarily have to go. You could stay on, doing research. We owe you that.”

“But I would have to step down as department head.”

“Well, the Museum of the Rockies is offering her a very senior position; I won’t be able to entice her here with anything less than — than—”

“Than my job,” I said. “And you can’t afford to pay both of us.”

“You could go on disability leave, but still come in to show her the ropes.”

“If you’ve been talking to Petroff, you know that’s not true. The insurance company won’t pay me unless I declare that I’m too sick to work. Now, yes, they’ve made clear that in terminal cases, they won’t argue the point. If I say I’m too sick, they’ll believe me — but I cannot come into the office and still receive benefits.”

“Getting a scholar of Lillian’s stature would be great for the museum,” Christine said.

“She’s hardly the only option you’ll have to replace me,” I said. “When I have to leave, you can promote Darlene, or — or make an offer to Ralph Chapman; get him to bring his applied-morphometrics lab here. That would be a real coup.”

Christine spread her arms. It was all bigger than her. “I’m sorry, Tom. Really I am.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “This doesn’t have anything to do with finding the best paleontologist. This has to do with our disagreements over how you’ve been running this museum.”

Christine did a credible job of sounding wounded. “Tom, you do me a disservice.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “And — and, besides, what’s Hollus going to do?”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll want to continue his research,” said Christine.

“We’ve been working together. He trusts me.”

“He’ll work just fine with Lillian.”

“No, he won’t,” I said. “We’re a . . .” I felt silly saying it. “We’re a team.”

“He simply needs a competent paleontologist as his guide, and, well, forgive me, Tom, but surely you recognize that it should be someone who will be around for years to come, someone who can document everything he or she has learned from the alien.”

“I’m keeping a meticulous journal,” I said. “I’m writing everything down.”

“Nonetheless, for the sake of the museum—”

I was growing more angry — and more bold. “I could go to any museum or university with a decent fossil collection, and Hollus would come with me. I could get an offer from anywhere I wanted, and, with an alien along for the ride, no one would care about my health.”

“Tom, be reasonable.”

I don’t have to be reasonable,I thought. No one going through what I’m going through has to be reasonable. “It’s nonnegotiable,” I said. “If I go, so does Hollus.”

Christine made a show of studying the woodgrain on her desktop, tracing it with her index finger. “I wonder how Hollus would react if I told him you were using him this way.”

I stuck out my chin. “I wonder how he’d react if I told him how you are treating me.”

We both sat in silence for a time. Finally, I said, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be getting back to my work.” I made an effort not to stress the final word.

Christine sat motionless, and I got up and left, pain slicing through me, although, of course, I refused to let it show.

I stormed back to my office. Hollus had been looking at endocranial casts in my absence; spurred on by my earlier comments, he was now exploring the rise of intelligence in mammals after the K/T boundary. I was never sure if I was reading his body language correctly, but he seemed to have no trouble reading mine. “You” “seem” “upset,” he said.

“Dr. Dorati the museum’s director, remember her?” He’d met her several times now, including when the prime minister had shown up. “She’s trying to force me to go on long-term disability leave. She wants me out.”

“Why?”

“I’m the potential vampire slayer, remember? I’m an opponent of hers politically here at the museum. She has taken the ROM in a direction a number of us long-time curators object to. And now she sees an opportunity to replace me with someone who agrees with her views.”

“But disability leave . . . surely that relates to your illness?”

“There’s no other way for her to force me out.”

“What is the nature of your dispute?”

“I believe the museum should be a place of scholarship and it should provide as much information as possible about each of its displays. She believes the museum should be a tourist attraction and should not intimidate laypeople with a lot of facts, figures, and fancy words.”

“And this issue is important?”

I was taken aback by the question. It had seemed important when I’d started fighting Christine over it three years ago. I’d even called it, in an interview in the Toronto Star about all the brouhaha at the ROM, “the fight of my life.” But that was before Dr. Noguchi had shown me the dark spot on my x ray, before I’d started feeling the pain, before the chemotherapy, before . . .

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly.

“I am sorry to hear of your difficulties,” said Hollus.

I chewed my lower lip. I had no right to say any of this. “I told Dr. Dorati that you would leave if she forced me out.”