But now, here I was spending most of my time with a virtual-reality simulation. Yes, there was a real flesh-and-blood Hollus somewhere, and yes, I’d even met him. But most of my interactions were with something computer-generated, a cyberghost. One could easily get sucked into an artificial world. Yes, one surely could.

I hugged my wife, savoring reality.

23

I hadn’t slept well last night or the night before, and I guess the fatigue was getting to me. I’d tried — I had really tried — to be stoic about what I was going through, to keep a stiff upper lip. But today —

Today . . .

It was the golden hour, the hour between the beginning of work at 9:00 A.M. and the opening of the museum to the public at 10:00. Hollus and I were looking at the special exhibit of Burgess Shale fossils: Opabinia and Sanctacaris and Wiwaxia and Anomalocaris and Hallucigenia, lifeforms so bizarre they defied easy categorization.

And the fossils made me think of Stephen Jay Gould’s book about the Burgess fauna, Wonderful Life.

And that made me think about the movie Gould was alluding to, the Jimmy Stewart classic, the Yuletide favorite.

And that made me think about how much I valued my life . . . my real, actual, flesh-and-blood existence.

“Hollus,” I said, tentatively, softly.

His twin eyestalks had been staring at Opabinia’s cluster of five eyes, so unlike anything else in Earth’s past. He swiveled the stalks to look at me.

“Hollus,” I said again, “I know your race is more advanced than mine.”

He was motionless.

“And, well, you must know things that we don’t.”

“True.”

“I — you’ve met my wife Susan. You’ve met Ricky.”

He touched his eyes together. “You have a pleasant family,” he said.

“I — I don’t want to leave them, Hollus. I don’t want Ricky to grow up without a father. I don’t want Susan to be alone.”

“That is unfortunate,” agreed the Forhilnor.

“There must be something you can do — something you can do to save me.”

“I am sorry, Tom. I really am. But as I said to your son, there is nothing.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, look. I know how these things work. You’ve got some sort of noninterference directive, right? You’re not allowed to change anything here. I understand that, but—”

“There really is no such directive,” Hollus said. “I would help you if I could.”

“But you’ve got to know how to cure cancer. With everything you know about DNA and how life works — you’ve got to know how to cure something as simple as cancer.”

“Cancer plagues my people, too. I told you that.”

“And the Wreeds? What about the Wreeds?”

“Them as well. Cancer is, well, a fact of life.”

“Please,” I said. “Please.”

“There is nothing I can do.”

“You have to,” I said. My voice was growing more strident; I hated the way it sounded — but I couldn’t stop. “You have to.”

“I am sorry,” said the alien.

Suddenly I was shouting, my words echoing off the glass display cases. “Damn it, Hollus. God damn it. I’d help you if I could. Why won’t you help me?”

Hollus was silent.

“I’ve got a wife. And a son.”

The Forhilnor’s twin voices acknowledged this. “I” “know.”

“So help me, damn you. Help me! I don’t want to die.”

“I do not want you to die, either,” said Hollus. “You are my friend.”

“You’re not my friend!” I shouted. “If you were my friend, you would help me.”

I expected him to wink out, expected the holographic projection to shut off, leaving me alone with the ancient, dead remnants of the Cambrian explosion. But Hollus stayed with me, calmly waiting, while I broke down and cried.

Hollus had disappeared for the day around 4:20 in the afternoon, but I stayed late; working in my office. I was ashamed of myself, disgusted at my performance.

The end was coming; I’d known it for months.

Why couldn’t I be more brave? Why couldn’t I face it with more dignity?

It was time to wrap things up. I knew that.

Gordon Small and I hadn’t spoken for thirty years. We had been good friends in childhood, living on the same street in Scarborough, but we’d had a falling out at university. He felt I had wronged him horribly; I felt he had wronged me horribly. For the first ten years or so after our big fight, I probably thought about him at least once a month. I was still furious about what he’d done to me, and, as I would lie in bed at night, my mind cycling through all the things it could possibly be upset about, Gordon would come up.

There was a lot of other unfinished business in my life, of course — relationships of all sorts that should be concluded or repaired. I knew that I’d never get around to some of them.

For instance, there was Nicole, the girl I’d stood up the night of our high-school prom. I’d never been able to tell her why — that my father had gotten drunk and had pushed my mother down the stairs, and that I’d spent that night with her in the emergency department at Scarborough General. How could I tell Nicole that? In retrospect, of course, perhaps I should have just said that my mother had had a fall, and I’d had to take her to the hospital, but Nicole was my girlfriend, and she might have wanted to come to see my mother, so instead I lied and said I’d had car trouble, and I was caught in that lie, and I never was able to explain to her what really happened.

Then there was Bjorn Amundsen, who had borrowed a hundred dollars from me at university but had never repaid it. I knew he was poor; I knew he wasn’t getting help from his parents, the way I was; I knew he’d been turned down for a scholarship. He needed the hundred more than I did; indeed, he always needed it more than I did, and was never able to pay it back. Stupidly, I’d once made a comment about him being a bad risk. He took to avoiding me rather than have to admit that he could not repay the loan. I’d always thought you couldn’t put a price on friendship, but, in that case, it turned out that I could — and it was a measly hundred bucks. I’d love to apologize to Bjorn, but I had no idea what had become of him.

And there was Paul Kurusu, a Japanese student in my high school, who once, in a fit of anger, I’d called a racist name — the only time in my life I’d ever done that. He’d looked at me with such hurt; he’d heard similar names from others, of course, but I was supposed to be his friend. I had no idea what had come over me, and I’d always wanted to tell him how sorry I was. But how do you bring something like that up three decades later?

But Gordon Small was one I had to make peace with. I couldn’t — couldn’t go to my grave with that unresolved. Gordon had moved to Boston in the early ‘80s. I called directory assistance. There were three Gordon Smalls listed for Boston, but only one had the middle initial P — and Philip, it came back to me, had been Gordon’s middle name.

I jotted down the number, dialed nine again for an outside line, dialed my long-distance billing code, then keyed in Gordon’s number. A girl’s voice answered. “Hello?”

“Hello,” I said. “May I please speak to Gordon Small?”

“Just a second,” said the girl. Then she shouted out, “Grandpa!”

Grandpa.He was a grandfather now — a grandfather at fifty-four. This was ridiculous; so much time had passed. I was about to put down the handset when a voice came from the speaker. “Hello?”

Two syllables, that’s all — but I recognized him at once. The sound brought a flood of memories rushing back.

“Gord,” I said, “it’s Tom Jericho.”

There was startled silence for a few seconds, and then, frosty, “Ah.”

He didn’t slam down the phone, at least. Maybe he was thinking that someone had died — a mutual friend, someone he’d want to know about, someone who meant enough to both of us that I’d set aside our differences to let him know about the funeral, someone from the old gang, the old neighborhood.