Authors: Robert J Sawyer
He arranged us in a semicircle, as if we were a biological shield for him and Cooter. “Move,” he said, and although my back was to him I was sure he was swinging his large gun left and right, preparing to fire in an arc if need be.
I started walking forward; Christine, the Forhilnors, and the Wreeds followed suit. We stepped out from under the overhang that shielded the area by the elevator, went down the four steps into the Rotunda proper, and started crossing the wide marble floor leading toward the entryway.
I swear I felt the splash against my bald head first, and only then heard the deafening shot from above. I swung around. It was difficult to make out what I was seeing; the only light in the Rotunda was what was spilling in from the George Weston gallery and from the street through the glass-doored vestibule and the stained-glass windows above it. J. D.’s head was open, like a melon, and blood had gone everywhere, including onto me and the aliens. His corpse jerked forward, toward me, and his submachine gun went skittering across the floor.
A second shot rang out almost on top of the first, but it hadn’t quite been synchronized; perhaps in the darkened balcony above, the two officers—there seemed to be at least that many up there—hadn’t been able to see each other. Short-haired Cooter moved his head just in time, and he was suddenly diving forward, trying to retrieve J. D.’s gun.
A Wreed was in the way; Cooter knocked him over. With the alien splayed out and flailing around, the sharpshooters apparently couldn’t clearly see Cooter.
I was in shock; I could feel J. D.’s blood dripping down to my neck. Suddenly the Wreed who was still standing flew up into the air. I knew it had been wearing a device to help it walk comfortably under Earth’s gravity; I hadn’t realized that it was strong enough to let him fly.
The other Forhilnor kicked the large gun, sending it spinning farther out into the Rotunda. Cooter continued to scramble toward it. The Wreed who had fallen was pulling himself to his feet. Meanwhile, the flying Wreed had now risen three meters off the ground.
Cooter had made it to the gun and rolled onto his side, shooting up into the darkened balconies. He pumped the trigger repeatedly, spraying out an arc of lead. The bullets hit ninety-year-old stone carvings, sending debris raining down upon us.
The other Wreed took to the air as well. I tried to get behind one of the freestanding wall segments that partially defined the edges of the Rotunda. Hollus was moving quickly—but going in the opposite direction, and soon, to my astonishment, she had reached the taller of the two totem poles. She flexed her six legs and leapt the short distance from the staircase onto the pole, wrapping her various limbs about it. And then she started shimmying at a great clip up the totem. Soon she was out of sight; she could go all the way to the third floor. I was glad she was apparently safe.
“All right,” shouted Cooter in his accented voice, as he aimed the submachine gun at Christine, the second Forhilnor, and me in turn. His voice was edged with panic. “All right, y’all. Nobody move.”
There were cops back in the vestibule now, cops up on the balcony, two Wreeds flying around the Rotunda like crazed angels, one Forhilnor standing on one side of me, Christine standing on the other, and the corpse of J. D. exsanguinating all over the marble starburst of the Rotunda’s floor, making it slick.
“Give it up,” said Christine to Cooter. “Can’t you see you’re surrounded?”
“Shut up!” shouted Cooter. He was clearly at a loss without J.D. “Just shut the hell up.”
And then, to my astonishment, I heard a familiar two-toned bleep. The holoform projector, which, as always, I had in a pocket, was signaling that it was about to come on.
Cooter had backed under the overhang of the balcony; he could no longer see the sharpshooters, meaning they could no longer see him. An image of Hollus wavered into existence, full-blown, almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Cooter turned around; he was panicked and didn’t seem to notice that the missing Forhilnor had suddenly rejoined us.
“Cooter,” said the Hollus simulacrum, boldly stepping forward. “My name is Hollus.” Cooter immediately aimed the submachine gun at her, but the Forhilnor continued to close the distance between them. We all started falling back. I could see that the police in the vestibule were confused; Hollus had apparently interposed himself between them and Cooter. “You have not shot anyone yet,” said Hollus, the words like the beating of twin hearts. “You saw what happened to your associate; do not let the same fate befall you.”
I made motions with my hands that I hoped the others could see in the dark: I wanted them to fan out so that none of us were along the same line that connected Cooter and Hollus.
“Give me the weapon,” said Hollus. She was now four meters from Cooter. “Relinquish it and we will all depart from here alive.”
“Back off!” cried Cooter.
Hollus continued to approach. “Give me the weapon,” she said again.
Cooter shook his head violently. “All we wanted to do was show you aliens that what these scientists were telling you wasn’t the truth.”
“I understand that,” said Hollus, taking another step forward. “And I will gladly listen to you. Just give me the weapon.”
“I know you believe in God,” said Cooter. “But you haven’t yet been saved.”
“I will listen to anything you wish to say,” said Hollus, inching forward, “but only after you relinquish the weapon.”
“Make all the cops leave,” said Cooter.
“They are not going to leave.” Another six-legged increment toward the man.
“Don’t come any closer, or I’ll shoot,” said Cooter.
“You do not want to shoot anyone,” said Hollus, still advancing, “least of all a fellow believer.”
“I swear I’ll kill you.”
“You will not,” said Hollus, closing the gap even more.
“Stay back! I’m warning you!”
The six round feet moved forward again. “God forgive me,” said Cooter and
—
—and he squeezed the trigger.
And bullets erupted from the gun—
And they entered the Hollus simulacrum—
And the force fields that composed the simulated body slowed the bullets down, retarding their motion more and more, until they emerged from the other side. They continued to fly across the Rotunda, traveling another two meters or so in parabolic paths that brought them clattering to the stone floor.
The simulacrum moved forward, reaching out with its force-field arms to grab the submachine gun by the muzzle, which surely was now so hot that no flesh-and-blood being could have managed to hold it.
The real Hollus, upstairs, presumably on the third floor, yanked her arms back, and her simulacrum, down here in the lobby, yanked its arms back, too. And Cooter, startled that the being he’d just filled with bullets was not dead, let go of the gun. The avatar spun around and quickly retreated.
The police surged in through the vestibule and—
It was unnecessary now. Totally unnecessary.
One of the cops squeezed off a round.
And Cooter staggered backward, his mouth a wide, perfect “O” of surprise. He hit a wall segment and slumped down in the dark, a trail of blood like a claw mark following him to the floor.
And his head lolled to one side.
And he went to meet his maker.
29
The cops questioned Christine and me for hours, but they had let the four aliens immediately return to the mother-ship so that Barbulkan’s wound could be treated. I finally took a cab home—thirty dollars, with tip—and was up for another two hours telling Susan all about what had happened.
“My God,” she said, over and over again. “My God, you could have been killed.”
“Hollus saved me. She saved everyone.”
“I’m going to give that great big spider a huge hug if I ever get the chance,” said Susan, smiling.
I smiled, too, and kissed her. But I was exhausted by this point—absolutely bone-weary. My vision was blurring, and I felt lightheaded. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I said, “but I have got to get some sleep.”
She nodded, kissed me again, and we headed up to our room.
I slept until 10:00 Monday morning. The shootout had occurred too late to make the morning papers, but Susan told me that both
Breakfast Television
and
Canada A.M.
had led with the story. She’d stayed home from the office to be there for me when I awoke. Ricky was already off to school by the time I crawled out of bed.
I finally managed to make it into the ROM by noon. Fortunately, since it was indeed Monday, the museum was closed to the public, giving the facilities division a chance to clean things up; they were still mopping the Rotunda’s marble floor when I got there. Meanwhile, Jonesy and all his preparators were in Garfield Weston Hall, salvaging everything they could from the shattered shales. Several paleontologists were flying up from the Smithsonian, too, to lend a hand; they were expected before the end of the day.
I made it up to my office and collapsed into my chair, rubbing my temples, trying to banish the headache I’d woken up with. Shortly after I sat down, the holoform projector bleeped, and the Hollus simulacrum wavered into existence.
I rose from my chair, my head pounding as I did so. “How are you?” I asked, concerned.
The Forhilnor’s torso bobbed. “Distressed. I did not sleep well, despite medication given me by my ship’s doctor.”
I nodded sympathetically. “I didn’t sleep well, either; I kept hearing gunshots echo through my head.” I frowned and sat back down. “They say there’s going to be an inquest. The cops probably didn’t have to kill Cooter.”
Hollus’s eyestalks moved in a way I’d never seen them do before. “I have limited sympathy for him,” she said. “He injured Barbulkan and tried to kill me.” She paused. “How extensive was the damage to the Burgess Shale fossils?”
I shook my head slowly. “Everything in the first five cases was destroyed,” I said, “including the one you were scanning.” I felt nauseous contemplating the loss; not only were they some of the world’s most important fossils, but they had also been some of the best preserved, hauntingly beautiful creatures, almost extraterrestrial in appearance. Harming them was barbarous, a sacrilege. “Of course, the fossils were insured,” I said, “so there will be a lot of money coming to both the ROM and the Smithsonian, but the specimens are irreplaceable.”
“In a way it is fortunate,” said Hollus. “Presumably they started shooting with the case we were scanning specifically because its glass cover was open. The scans were partially completed, so at least a few of the specimens can be recovered. I will have reconstructions made for you.”
I nodded, knowing no matter how realistic and accurate the reconstructions might be, they would never be the same as the originals. “Thank you.”
“It is a terrible loss,” Hollus said. “I have never seen fossils of that quality on any other world. They were really quite—”
She broke off in mid-sentence, and her simulacrum froze in place, as if the real Hollus, the one in synchronous orbit aboard the mothership, had been distracted by something happening up there.
“Hollus?” I said, not really concerned; one of her shipmates was probably just asking her a question.
“Just a moment,” she replied, the simulacrum moving again. I heard a few songs in the Forhilnor language as she communicated with somebody else, and then the simulacrum froze once more.
I sighed impatiently. This was worse than Call Waiting: you still had the damned simulacrum taking up most of your office. I picked up a magazine off my desk—the latest
New Scientist;
the departmental copy started its circulation with me and worked its way down through the ranks. I’d only just opened its cover when the Hollus avatar started moving again. “Terrible news,” she said, one word per mouth, her voices oddly attenuated. “I—my God, it is terrible news.”
I dropped the magazine. “What?”
Hollus’s eyestalks were swinging back and forth. “Our mothership does not have to contend with the scattering of light by your planet’s atmosphere; even during daytime, the
Merelcas’s
sensors can still clearly see the stars. And one of those stars . . .”
I leaned forward in my chair. “Yes? Yes?”
“One of those stars has begun its conversion to a—what is the word, again? When a massive star explodes?”
“A supernova?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Wow.” I remembered all the excitement around the planetarium back in 1987 when the U of T’s Jan Shelton discovered the supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud. “That’s great.”
“It is
not
great,” said Hollus. “The star that has begun to explode is Alpha Orionis.”
“Betelgeuse?” I said. “Betelgeuse has started going supernova?”
“That is correct.”
“Are you sure?”
“There can be no doubt,” said the Forhilnor, her two voices sounding quite shaky. “It is already shining with more than a million times its normal brightness, and its luminosity is still increasing.”
“My God,” I said. “I—I should phone Donald Chen. He’ll know who to notify. There’s a central bureau for astronomical telegrams, or some such thing . . .” I picked up my phone and dialed Chen’s extension. He answered on the third ring; one more and his voice mail would have picked up.
“Don,” I said, “it’s Tom Jericho. Hollus here tells me that Betelgeuse has just gone supernova.”
There was silence for a few moments. “Betelgeuse is—
was—
a prime candidate to go supernova,” he said. “But no one knew precisely when it would happen.” A pause, and then, earnestly, as if he just realized something: “Did Hollus say Betelgeuse? Alpha Orionis?”
“Yes.”
“Look, is Hollus sure? Absolutely sure?”
“Yes, she says she’s positive.”
“Damn,” said Chen into his phone’s mouthpiece, but I don’t think he was really talking to me. “Damn.”
“What?” I said.
Chen’s voice sounded strained. “I’ve been going over that supernova data Hollus sent down, particularly as related to gamma-ray output. For the last supernova, the one in 1987, we had lousy data; it happened before we had any dedicated gamma-ray observation satellites—Compton didn’t go up until 1991. The only gamma-ray data we had for Supernova 1987A was from the Solar Maximum Mission satellite, and it wasn’t designed for extragalactic observations.”