“What?” said Hollus. And then, realizing, his eyestalks did their S-ripple again. “No, no, no. The crystals are the implants for the virtual-reality interface; they are what allow the telepresence simulacrum to mimic my moves.”

“Oh,” I said. I turned around and shouted out Ricky’s name. My son came bounding up the stairs from the basement. He started to head to the dining room, thinking I’d called him for dinner. But then he caught sight of me and Susan and Hollus. His eyes went wider than I’d ever seen them. He came over to me, and I put an arm around his shoulders.

“Hollus,” I said, “I’d like you to meet my son Rick.”

“Hell” “oh,” said Hollus.

I looked down at my boy. “Ricky, what do you say?”

Ricky’s eyes were still wide as he looked at the alien. “Cool!”

We hadn’t expected Hollus to show up for dinner in the flesh. Our dining-room table was a long rectangle, with a removable leaf in the middle. The table itself was dark wood, but it was covered with a white tablecloth. There really wasn’t much room for the Forhilnor. I had Susan help me move the sideboard out of the way to free up some space.

I realized I’d never seen Hollus sit down; his avatar obviously didn’t need to, but I thought the real Hollus might be more comfortable if he had some support. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?” I asked.

Hollus looked around. He spotted the ottoman in the living room, positioned in front of the love seat. “Could I use that?” he said. “The little stool?”

“Sure.”

Hollus moved into the living room. With a six-year-old boy around, we didn’t have any breakables out, which was a good thing. Hollus bumped the coffee table and the couch on his way; our furniture wasn’t spread out enough for a being of his proportions. He brought back the ottoman, placed it by the table, then stepped over it, so that his round torso was directly above the circular stool. He then lowered his torso down onto it. “There,” he said, sounding content.

Susan looked quite uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Hollus. I didn’t think you were actually, really coming. I have no idea whether what I made is something you can eat.”

“What did you make?”

“A salad — lettuce, cherry tomatoes, diced celery, bits of carrot, croutons, and an oil-and-vinegar dressing.”

“I can eat that.”

“And lamb chops.”

“They are cooked?”

Susan smiled. “Yes.”

“I can eat that, too, if you can provide me with about a liter of room-temperature water to go with it.”

“Certainly,” she said.

“I’ll get it,” I said. I went to the kitchen and filled a pitcher with tap water.

“I’ve also made milk shakes for Tom and Ricky.”

“This is the bovine mammary secretion?” asked Hollus.

“Yes.”

“If it is not rude to do so, I will not partake.”

I smiled, and Ricky, Susan, and I took our places at the table. Susan brought the salad bowl out and passed it to me. I used the serving forks to move some to my plate, then loaded some onto Ricky’s. I then put some on Hollus’s plate.

“I have brought my own utensils,” he said. “I hope that is not rude.”

“Not at all,” I said. Even after my trips to China, I was still one of those who always had to ask for a knife and fork in a Chinese restaurant. Hollus pulled two devices that looked a bit like corkscrews from the folds of the cloth wrapped around his torso.

“Do you say grace?” asked Hollus.

The question startled me. “Not normally.”

“I have seen it on television.”

“Some families do it,” I said. Those that have things to be thankful for.

Hollus used one of his corkscrews to stab some lettuce, and he conveyed it to the orifice on top of his circular body. I’d watched him make the motions of eating before, but had never seen him actually do it. It was a noisy process; his dentition made a snapping sound as it worked. I suppose only his speaking orifices were miked when he used his avatar; I presumed that was why I’d never heard the sound before.

“Is the salad okay?” I asked him.

Hollus continued to transfer it into his eating orifice while he spoke; I guessed that Forhilnors never choked to death while dining. “It is fine, thank you,” he said.

Ricky spoke up. “Why do you talk like that?” he asked. My son imitated Hollus by speaking in turns out of the left and right sides of his mouth. “It” “is” “fine” “thank” “you.”

“Ricky!” said Susan, embarrassed that our son had forgotten his manners.

But Hollus didn’t seem to mind the question. “One thing that humans and my people share is a divided brain,” he said. “You have a left and right hemisphere, and so do we. We hold that consciousness is the result of the interplay of the two hemispheres; I believe humans have some similar theories. In cases where the hemispheres have been severed due to injury, so that they function independently, whole sentences come out of a single speaking orifice, but much less complex thoughts are expressed.”

“Oh,” said Ricky, going back to his salad.

“That’s fascinating,” I said. Coordinating speech between partially autonomous brain halves must be difficult; maybe that was why Hollus was apparently incapable of using contractions. “I wonder if we had two mouths, whether humans would alternate words or syllables between them as well.”

“You seem to rely less on left-right integration than we Forhilnors do,” Hollus said. “I understand that in cases of a severed corpus callosum, humans can still walk.”

“I think that’s right, yes.”

“We cannot,” Hollus said. “Each half of the brain controls three legs, on the corresponding side of the body. All our legs have to work together, or we topple over, and—”

“My daddy is going to die,” said Ricky, looking down at his salad plate.

My heart jumped. Susan looked shocked.

Hollus put down his eating utensils. “Yes, he told me. I am very sorry about that.”

“Can you help him?” asked Ricky, looking now at the alien.

“I am sorry,” said Hollus. “There is nothing I can do.”

“But you’re from space and stuff,” said Ricky.

Hollus’s eyestalks stopped moving. “Yes, I am.”

“So you should know things.”

“I know some things,” he said. “But I do not know how to cure cancer. My own mother died from it.”

Ricky regarded the alien with great interest. He looked like he wanted to offer a word of comfort to the alien, but he clearly had no idea what to say.

Susan stood up and brought the lamb chops and mint jelly in from the kitchen.

We ate in silence.

I realized that an opportunity had presented itself that wasn’t likely to be repeated.

Hollus was here in the flesh.

After dinner, I asked him down to the den. He had some trouble negotiating the half-flight of stairs, but he managed.

I went to a two-drawer filing cabinet and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “It’s normal for people to write a document called a will to indicate how one’s personal effects should be distributed after death,” I said. “Naturally, I’m leaving almost everything to Susan and Ricky, although I’m also making some bequests to charities: the Canadian Cancer Society, the ROM, a couple of others. There are also a few things going to my brother, his children, and one or two other relatives.” I paused. “I — I’ve been thinking of amending my will to leave something to you, Hollus, but well, it seemed pointless. I mean, you won’t likely be around after I’m gone, and, well, usually you’re not really here, anyway. But tonight . . .”

“Tonight,” agreed Hollus, “it is the real me.”

I held out the sheaf of papers. “It’s probably simplest if I just give you this now. It’s the typescript for my book Canadian Dinosaurs. These days, people write books on computers, but that one was banged out on a manual typewriter. It doesn’t have any real value, and the information is now very much out of date, but it’s my little contribution to the popular literature about dinosaurs, and, well, I’d like you to have it — one paleontologist to another.” I shrugged a little. “Something to remember me by.”