Calculating God

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Ewell dropped his jacket, revealing the small submachine gun he’d had concealed under it. Tired of lugging it around, he placed the gun on the floor, then sat in one of the chairs.

  Falsey took a different chair, intertwined his fingers behind his head, and leaned back, waiting patiently.

  * * *

  28

  I

  t 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 our 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, rat
her 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 A.D.”

  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 di
e—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.