“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.”

13

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.

The Forhilnor clinked his eyes. “He is expressing surprise that you are welcoming him to the planet. Wreeds do not generalize from their species to their world. Try welcoming him on behalf of humanity instead.”

“Ah,” I said. I turned back to the Wreed. “As a human, I welcome you.”

More tumbling rocks, then the synthesized voice: “Were you not human, would you welcome me still?”

“Umm . . .”

“The correct answer is yes,” said Hollus.

“Yes,” I said.

The Wreed spoke in its own language again, then the computer translated the words. “Then welcomed I am, and pleased to be here that is here and here that is there.”

Hollus bobbed up and down. “That is a reference to the virtual-reality interface. He is happy to be here, but he acknowledges that he is really still on board the mothership, of course.”

“Of course,” I repeated. I was almost afraid to speak again. “Did you — um — did you have a good trip to Earth?”

“In which sense do you use ‘good’?” said the synthesized voice.

I looked at Hollus again.

“He knows you employ the term good to mean many things, including moral, pleasant, and expensive.”

“Expensive?” I said.

“ ‘The good china,’ ” said Hollus. “ ‘Good jewelry.’ ”

These darned aliens knew my own language better than I did. I turned my attention to the Wreed again. “I mean, did you have a pleasant trip?”

“No,” he said.

Hollus interpreted again. “Wreeds only live for about thirty Earth years. Because of that, they prefer to travel in cryofreeze, a form of artificially suspended animation.”

“Oh,” I said. “So it wasn’t a bad trip — he just wasn’t aware of it, right?”

“That is right,” said Hollus.

I tried to think of something to say. After all this time with my Forhilnor friend, I’d grown used to having flowing conversations with an alien. “So, ah, how do you like it here? What do you think of Earth?”

“Much water,” said the Wreed. “Large moon, aesthetically pleasing. Air too moist, though; unpleasantly sticky.”

Now we were getting somewhere; I at least understood all that — although if he thought Toronto’s air was sticky now, in spring, he had a real treat for him coming in August. “Are you interested in fossils, like Hollus is?”

Tossing gravel, then: “Everything fascinates.”

I paused for a moment, deciding if I wanted to ask the question. Then I figured, why not? “Do you believe in God?” I asked.

“Do you believe in sand?” asked the Wreed. “Do you believe in electromagnetism?”

“That is a yes,” said Hollus, trying to be helpful. “Wreeds often speak in rhetorical questions, but they have no notion of sarcasm, so do not take offense.”

“More significant is whether God believes in me,” said T’kna.

“How do you mean?” I asked. My head was starting to hurt.