Calculating God (20 page)

Christine was looking at something on the web; she raised a hand to tell me to be patient a moment longer. Beautiful textiles hung from her office walls. There was a suit of armor behind Christine’s desk; ever since our Armour Court—which I’d always thought had been a rather popular exhibit—had been scrubbed to make room for one of Christine’s trademark feed-them-pablum displays, we’d had more suits of armor than we knew what to do with. Christine also had a stuffed passenger pigeon (the ROM’s Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology—the slapped-together catchall formed by merging the old ichthyology, herpetology, mammalogy, and ornithology departments—had about twenty of them). She also had a cluster of quartz crystals as big as a large microwave oven, salvaged from the old Geology Gallery; a beautiful jade Buddha, about the size of a basketball; an Egyptian canopic jar; and, of course, a dinosaur skull—a fiberglass cast from a
Lambeosaurus.
The blade-shaped crest on the duckbill’s head at one end of the room nicely balanced the double-headed ax held by the suit of armor at the other.

Christine clicked her mouse, minimizing her browser window, and at last gave me her full attention. She gestured with an open palm toward one of the three leather-upholstered swivel chairs that faced her desk. I took the middle one, feeling a certain trepidation as I did so; Christine had a policy of never offering a seat if the meeting was to be wrapped up quickly.

“Hello, Tom,” she said. She made a solicitous face. “How are you feeling?”

I shrugged a little; there wasn’t much to say. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.”

“Are you in much pain?”

“It comes and goes,” I said. “I’ve got some pills that help.”

“Good,” she said. She was quiet for a time; that was abnormal for Christine, who usually seemed to be in a great hurry. Finally, she spoke again. “How’s Suzanne doing? She holding up all right?”

I didn’t correct her on my wife’s name. “She’s managing. There’s a support group that meets at the Richmond Hill Public Library; she goes to meetings there once a week.”

“I’m sure they’re a comfort to her.”

I said nothing.

“And Richie? How’s he?”

Two in a row was too much. “It’s Ricky,” I said.

“Ah, sorry. How’s he doing?”

I shrugged again. “He’s frightened. But he’s a brave kid.”

Christine gestured toward me, as if that only made sense given who Ricky’s father was. I tipped my head in thanks at the unspoken compliment. She was silent a moment longer, then: “I’ve been talking to Petroff, over in H.R. He says you’re fully covered. You could go on long-term-disability leave and receive eighty-five percent of your salary.”

I blinked and thought carefully about my next words. “I’m not sure it’s your place to be discussing my insurance situation with anyone.”

Christine raised both hands, palms out. “Oh, I didn’t discuss you in particular; I just asked about the general case of an employee with a ter—with a serious illness.” She’d started to say “terminal,” of course, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to use the word. Then she smiled. “And you’re covered. You don’t have to work anymore.”

“I know that. But I
want
to work.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be spending your time with Suzanne and Rich—Ricky?”

“Susan has her own job, and Ricky’s in grade one; he’s in school full days.”

“Still, Tom, I think . . . Isn’t it time you faced facts? You’re not able to bring a hundred percent to your job anymore. Isn’t it time you took some leave?”

I was in pain, as always, and that just made it harder to control my temper. “I don’t want to take any leave,” I said. “I want to work. Damn it, Christine, my oncologist says it’s
good
for me to be coming to work every day.”

Christine shook her head, as if saddened that I was unable to see the big picture. “Tom, I’ve got to think of what’s best for the museum.” She took a deep breath. “You must know Lillian Kong.”

“Of course.”

“Well, you know that she quit as curator of fossil vertebrates at the Canadian Museum of Nature to—”

“To protest government cutbacks in spending on museums; yes, I know. She went to Indiana University.”

“Exactly. But I’ve heard through the grapevine that she’s not happy there, either. I think I could entice her to join us here at the ROM, if I move quickly. I know the Museum of the Rockies wants her, too, so she’s certainly not going to be available for long, and . . .”

She trailed off, waiting for me to complete her thought for her. I crossed my arms in front of my chest but said nothing. She looked disappointed that she’d have to spell it out. “And, well, Tom, you
are
going to be leaving us.”

A tired old joke drifted through my mind: Old curators never die; they just become part of their collections. “I can still do useful work.”

“The chances of me being able to get someone as qualified as Kong a year from now are slim.”

Lillian Kong was a damn fine paleontologist; she’d done some amazing work on ceratopsians and had received enormous amounts of press, including being on the cover of
Newsweek
and
Maclean’s
for her contributions to the dinosaur-bird controversy. But, like Christine, she was a dumb-downer: the Canadian Museum of Nature’s displays had become cloyingly populist, and not very informative, under her. She’d doubtless be an ally in Christine’s desire to make the ROM into an “attraction,” and indeed would agree to put pressure on Hollus to do public programming, something I’d steadfastly refused to do.

“Christine, don’t make me go.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t necessarily have to go. You could stay on, doing research. We owe you that.”

“But I would have to step down as department head.”

“Well, the Museum of the Rockies
is
offering her a very senior position; I won’t be able to entice her here with anything less than—than—”

“Than my job,” I said. “And you can’t afford to pay both of us.”

“You could go on disability leave, but still come in to show her the ropes.”

“If you’ve been talking to Petroff, you know that’s not true. The insurance company won’t pay me unless I declare that I’m too sick to work. Now, yes, they’ve made clear that in terminal cases, they won’t argue the point. If I say I’m too sick, they’ll believe me—but I cannot come into the office and still receive benefits.”

“Getting a scholar of Lillian’s stature would be great for the museum,” Christine said.

“She’s hardly the only option you’ll have to replace me,” I said. “When I have to leave, you can promote Darlene, or—or make an offer to Ralph Chapman; get him to bring his applied-morphometrics lab here. That would be a real coup.”

Christine spread her arms. It was all bigger than her. “I’m sorry, Tom. Really I am.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “This doesn’t have anything to do with finding the best paleontologist. This has to do with our disagreements over how you’ve been running this museum.”

Christine did a credible job of sounding wounded. “Tom, you do me a disservice.”

“I doubt that,” I said. “And—and, besides, what’s Hollus going to do?”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll want to continue his research,” said Christine.

“We’ve been working together. He trusts me.”

“He’ll work just fine with Lillian.”

“No, he won’t,” I said. “We’re a . . .” I felt silly saying it. “We’re a team.”

“He simply needs a competent paleontologist as his guide, and, well, forgive me, Tom, but surely you recognize that it should be someone who will be around for years to come, someone who can document everything he or she has learned from the alien.”

“I’m keeping a meticulous journal,” I said. “I’m writing everything down.”

“Nonetheless, for the sake of the museum—”

I was growing more angry—and more bold. “I could go to any museum or university with a decent fossil collection, and Hollus would come with me. I could get an offer from anywhere I wanted, and, with an alien along for the ride, no one would care about my health.”

“Tom, be reasonable.”

I don’t have to be reasonable,
I thought. No one going through what I’m going through has to be reasonable. “It’s nonnegotiable,” I said. “If I go, so does Hollus.”

Christine made a show of studying the woodgrain on her desktop, tracing it with her index finger. “I wonder how Hollus would react if I told him you were using him this way.”

I stuck out my chin. “I wonder how he’d react if I told him how you are treating me.”

We both sat in silence for a time. Finally, I said, “If there’s nothing else, I’ll be getting back to my work.” I made an effort not to stress the final word.

Christine sat motionless, and I got up and left, pain slicing through me, although, of course, I refused to let it show.

20

I stormed back to my office. Hollus had been looking at endocranial casts in my absence; spurred on by my earlier comments, he was now exploring the rise of intelligence in mammals after the K/T boundary. I was never sure if I was reading his body language correctly, but he seemed to have no trouble reading mine. “You” “seem” “upset,” he said.

“Dr. Dorati the museum’s director, remember her?” He’d met her several times now, including when the prime minister had shown up. “She’s trying to force me to go on long-term disability leave. She wants me out.”

“Why?”

“I’m the potential vampire slayer, remember? I’m an opponent of hers politically here at the museum. She has taken the ROM in a direction a number of us long-time curators object to. And now she sees an opportunity to replace me with someone who agrees with her views.”

“But disability leave . . . surely that relates to your illness?”

“There’s no other way for her to force me out.”

“What is the nature of your dispute?”

“I believe the museum should be a place of scholarship and it should provide as much information as possible about each of its displays. She believes the museum should be a tourist attraction and should not intimidate laypeople with a lot of facts, figures, and fancy words.”

“And this issue is important?”

I was taken aback by the question. It had
seemed
important when I’d started fighting Christine over it three years ago. I’d even called it, in an interview in the
Toronto Star
about all the brouhaha at the ROM, “the fight of my life.” But that was before Dr. Noguchi had shown me the dark spot on my x ray, before I’d started feeling the pain, before the chemotherapy, before . . .

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly.

“I am sorry to hear of your difficulties,” said Hollus.

I chewed my lower lip. I had no right to say any of this. “I told Dr. Dorati that you would leave if she forced me out.”

Hollus was quiet for a long time. Back on Beta Hydri III, he had been an academic of some sort himself; he doubtless understood the prestige his presence brought to the ROM. But perhaps I’d offended him enormously, making him a pawn in a political game. He could surely see ahead several moves, surely knew that this might become ugly. I’d gone too far; I knew that.

And yet—

And yet, who could blame me? Christine was going to win regardless. All too soon, she would win.

Hollus pointed at my desk set. “You have used that device before to communicate with others in this building,” he said.

“My phone? Yes.”

“Can you connect to Dr. Dorati?”

“Umm, yes, but—”

“Do so.”

I hesitated for a moment, then lifted the handset and tapped out Christine’s three-digit extension.

“Dorati,” said Christine’s voice.

I tried to hand Hollus the handset. “I cannot use that,” he said. Of course he couldn’t; he had two separate mouths. I touched the speaker-phone key and nodded for him to go ahead.

“Dr. Dorati, this is Hollus deten stak Jaton.” It was the first time I’d heard the Forhilnor’s full name. “I am grateful for your hospitality in letting me do research here, but I am contacting you to inform you that Thomas Jericho is an integral part of my work, and if he leaves this museum, I will follow him wherever he goes.”

There was a stony silence for several seconds. “I see,” said Christine’s voice.

“Terminate the connection,” Hollus said to me. I clicked the phone off.

My heart fluttered; I had no idea if what Hollus had just done was the right thing. But I was deeply moved by his support. “Thank you,” I said.

The Forhilnor flexed both his upper and lower knees. “Dr. Dorati was all on the left.”

“All on the left?”

“Sorry. I mean what she did was wrong, in my view. Intervening was the least I could do.”

“I thought it was wrong, too,” I said. “But—well, I thought maybe my telling her you would go if I went was wrong, also.”

I was silent for a time, and at last Hollus replied. “So much of what is right and wrong is difficult to determine,” he said. “I probably would have performed similarly, had I been in your place.” He bobbed. “I do sometimes wish I had a Wreed’s insight into these matters.”

“You’d mentioned that before,” I said. “Why do Wreeds have an easier time than we do with questions of morality?”

Hollus shifted slightly from foot to foot. “The Wreeds are freed from the burden of ratiocination—of the kind of logic you and I undertake. Although math may confound them, thinking about philosophical questions, about the meaning of life, about ethics and morality, confounds
us.
We have an intuitive sense of right and wrong, but every theory of morality we come up with fails. You showed me those
Star Trek
movies . . .”

I had indeed; he’d been intrigued enough by the episodes we’d looked at to want to watch the first three classic
Trek
films. “Yes,” I said.

“There was one in which the impossible hybrid died.”

“The Wrath of Khan,”
I said.

“Yes. In it, much was made of the notion that ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.’ We Forhilnors have similar sentiments. It is an attempt to apply mathematics—something we are good at—to ethics, something we are not good at. But such attempts always fail us. In the film in which the hybrid was reborn—”