I nodded. Maybe I should.

“You know that I believe in souls,” she said simply.

“I know.”

That’s as far as she went with the thought, though. She didn’t ask me to go to church with her again; she’d asked once, a while ago, and that was fine. But she wouldn’t push. If attending St. George’s was helping her get through all this, then that was great. But we each had to cope with it in our own way.

Ricky came through the sliding glass door, out onto the deck. “Hey, sport,” I said. “Give your dad a kiss.”

He came over and kissed my cheek. Then he patted my face with his little hand. “I like it better this way,” he said. I think he was trying to cheer me up; he’d never liked the sandpaper roughness of the five o’clock shadow I used to get. I smiled at him.

Susan got up and kissed me, too.

And my wife and my son headed off.

With Ricky and Sue off at the Douglas Snow Aquatic Centre, four blocks away, I was all alone. I went back into the house and set up our video camera — an indulgence, a Christmas gift we’d given to each other a few years back — on a tripod in the den.

I turned on the camera, moved to the chair behind the desk, and sat down. “Hello, Ricky,” I said. And then I smiled apologetically. “I’m going to ask your mother not to show you this tape for ten years, so I guess you’re sixteen now. I’m sure you don’t go by ‘Ricky,’ anymore. Maybe you’re a ‘Rick,’ or maybe you’ve decided ‘Richard’ suits you better. So — so maybe I’ll just call you ‘son.’ ”

I paused. “I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of pictures of me; your mom was always taking snapshots. Maybe you even have some memories of me — I sure hope you do. I remember a few things from when I was six or seven . . . maybe an hour or two total.” I paused again. If he did remember me, I hoped it was as I looked before the cancer, back when I had hair, when I wasn’t so gaunt. Indeed, I should have made this tape as soon as I was diagnosed — certainly before I’d gone through chemotherapy.

“So you have me at a disadvantage,” I said. “You know what I look like, but I find myself wondering what you look like — what sort of man you’ve grown into.” I smiled. “You were a little small for your age when you were six — but so much can change in ten years. When I was your age — the age you are now, sixteen — I had grown a scraggly beard. There was only one other guy in my school who had one; it was, I guess, an act of youthful rebellion.” I shifted a bit in my chair.

“Anyway,” I said, “I’m sure you’ve grown up to be a fine man — I know your mother wouldn’t have let it turn out any other way. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I would have loved to have taught you how to tie a tie, how to shave, how to throw a football, how to drink a glass of wine. I don’t know what interests you’ve pursued. Sports? School theater? Whatever they are, you know I would have been in the audience as often as I could.”

I paused. “I guess you’re wrestling with what you want to do in life. I know you’ll find happiness and success whatever you choose. If you want, there should be plenty of money for you to go to university for as long as you like — right through to a doctorate, if that’s what you want. Do whatever will make you happy, of course, but I will tell you that I have greatly enjoyed the rewards of an academic life; maybe it won’t be for you, but if you are contemplating it, I do recommend it. I’ve traveled the world over, I’m reasonably well paid, and I get an enormous amount of flexibility in my time. I say that just in case you were wondering if your dad was happy in his job; yes, I was — very much so. And that’s the most important thing. If I have one piece of career advice to give you, it’s this: don’t worry about how much money you’ll make. Pick something that you’ll enjoy doing; you only go around once in life.”

I paused again. “But, really, there’s not much advice I can give you.” A smile. “Heck, when I was your age, the last thing I wanted was advice from my dad.” And then I shrugged a little. “Still, I will say this: please don’t smoke. Believe me, son, nothing is worth risking going through what I’ve been going through. I wasn’t a smoker — I’m sure you mom has told you that — but that is the way most people get lung cancer. Please, I beg you; don’t risk this.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall; there was plenty of time left — on the tape, at least.

“You’re probably curious about my relationship with Hollus, the Forhilnor.” I shrugged. “Frankly, I’m curious about it, too. I suppose if you remember anything from your childhood, it’s the night he came to visit our house. You know that was the real Hollus? Not a projection? Well, it was. You, me, and your mother were the first humans to actually meet a Forhilnor in the flesh. Besides this tape, I’m also leaving you a copy of the journal I’ve been keeping about my experiences with Hollus. Maybe someday you, or somebody else, will put together a book about all this. Of course, there will be gaps that have to be filled in — I’m sure there are relevant things going on that I don’t know about — but the notes I’ve made should give you a good start.

“Anyway, about my relationship with Hollus, all I know is this: I like him and I think he likes me. There’s a saying that an unexamined life is not worth living; getting cancer caused me to examine my life, but I think getting to know Hollus has caused me to examine what it means to be human.” I shrugged a little, acknowledging that what I was about to say was the sort of thing people didn’t normally say aloud. “And I guess what it means is this: to be human is to be fragile. We are easily hurt, and not just physically. We are easily hurt emotionally, too. So, as you move through life, my son, try not to hurt others.” I lifted my shoulders again. “That’s it; that’s the advice I have for you.” It wasn’t nearly enough, I knew; there was no way to make up for a lost decade with a few bromides. Ricky already had become the man he was going to be . . . without my help.

“There’s one final thing I want you to know,” I said. “Never doubt this for a moment, Richard Blaine Jericho. You had a father once, and he loved you. Always remember that.”

I got up, shut off the video camera, and stood there in the den, my sanctuary.

22

It had come to me while sleeping, doubtless because of the recording I’d made for Ricky: a version of me that would live on after my body had died. I was so excited, I got up and went downstairs to tap repeatedly on the holoform do-decahedron, in hopes of summoning Hollus. But he didn’t come; I had to wait until he appeared in my office of his own volition the next day.

“Hollus,” I said, as soon as his image had stabilized, “I think I know what they’ve buried beneath those warning landscapes on all those dead worlds.”

Hollus locked his eyes on me.

“It’s not nuclear waste,” I said. “As you said, there are no markings related to nuclear waste, and no need to worry about such things over million-year timeframes. No, they buried something they wanted to preserve forever, not something they wanted to get rid of. That’s why the Cassiopeians went so far as to shut off plate tectonics on their world by blowing up their moon — they wanted to be sure what they had in their subterranean vault never subducted.”

“Perhaps,” said Hollus. “But what would they want to preserve so carefully while at the same time trying to frighten anyone away from digging it up?”

“Themselves,” I said.

“You propose something like a bomb shelter? Seismic soundings suggest there is not enough volume in the vault on Mu Cassiopeae A Prime to house more than a small number of individuals.”

“No, no,” I said. “I think they’re all down there. Millions, billions; whatever their entire population was. I think they scanned their brains and uploaded themselves into a computer world — and the actual hardware generating that world, the machines they didn’t want anyone messing with, are stored beneath those horrendous landscapes.”