“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” said Falsey.
“No one will.”
“What about the alien? Doesn’t one of them spend a lot of time at the museum. We’ll be in a powerful lot of trouble if we hurt him.”
“Don’t you read the papers? He’s not really there; that’s just a projection.”
“But what about the people who go to the museum? They may be misguided, looking on all them fossils, but they aren’t evil like those abortion docs.”
“Don’t worry,” said Ewell. “We’ll do it on a Sunday night, after the museum has closed.”
I called Susan and Ricky and told them to prepare for a very special guest; Susan could do miracles with three hours’ notice. I worked on my journal for a time, then left the museum. I’d taken to wearing a floppy Tilley hat and sunglasses to disguise my appearance for the short walk from the staff entrance to the subway station; the UFO nuts still seemed to mostly congregate out in front of the ROM’s main entrance, quite some distance away. So far, none of them had intercepted me — and by the time I came out this evening, they all seemed to have gone home, anyway. I went down into the subway station and boarded a silver train.
When we pulled into Dundas station, a young man with a wispy blond beard entered the train. He was the right age to be a student at Ryerson; that university’s campus was just north of Dundas. The young man was wearing a green sweatshirt covered with white lettering that said:
I smiled; the provincial parliament buildings were at Queen’s Park, of course. Everyone, it seemed, was taking shots at Premier Harris these days.
When I finally arrived at the house on Ellerslie, I gathered my wife and son, and we went into the living room. I opened my briefcase and put the dodecahedron that was the holoform projector on the coffee table. Then I sat on the couch. Ricky scrambled up next to me. Susan perched herself on the arm of the love seat. I looked at the blue clock on the VCR. It was 7:59 P.M.;Hollus had agreed to join us at 8:00.
We waited, with Ricky fidgeting. The projector always made a two-toned bleep when turning on, but so far, it was dead silent.
8:00.
8:01.
8:02.
I knew the VCR clock was right; we had a Sony unit that picked up a time signal over the cable. I reached over to the coffee table and adjusted the dodecahedron’s position slightly, as if that would make any difference.
8:03.
8:04.
“Well,” said Susan, generally to the room. “I should go make the salad.”
Ricky and I continued to wait.
At 8:10, Ricky said, “What a ripoff.”
“I’m sorry, sport,” I said. “I guess something came up.” I couldn’t believe that Hollus had let me down. A lot of things are forgivable; making a man look bad in the eyes of his son isn’t one of them.
“Can I go watch TV until it’s time for dinner?” Ricky asked.
We normally let Ricky watch only one hour of TV a night, and he’d already done that. But I couldn’t disappoint him again. “Sure,” I said.
Ricky got up. I let out a heavy sigh.
He’d said we were friends.
Ah, well. I stood up, picked up the projector, weighed it in my hand, then put it back in my briefcase, and —
A sound, from the back door. I closed my briefcase and headed off to investigate. Our back door opened onto a wooden deck that my brother-in-law Tad and I had built five summers ago. I opened the vertical blinds over the sliding glass door, and —
It was Hollus, standing on my deck.
I removed the security rod along the base of the glass door and slid the door open. “Hollus!” I said.
Susan had appeared behind me, wondering what I was up to. I turned to look at her; she’d seen Hollus and other Forhilnors often enough on TV, but her mouth was now agape.
“Come in,” I said. “Come in.”
Hollus managed to squeeze through the doorway, although it was a tight fit. He had changed for dinner; he was now wearing a wine-colored cloth, fastened with a polished slice out of a geode. “Why didn’t you appear inside?” I asked. “Why project yourself outside?”
Hollus’s eyestalks moved. There was something subtly different about the way he looked. Maybe it was just the lighting, from a halogen torchiere lamp; I was used to seeing him under the fluorescent panels we have at the museum.
“You invited me to your home,” he said.
“Yes, but—”
Suddenly, I felt his hand upon my arm. I’d touched him before, felt the static tingle of the force fields that composed his projection. This was different. His flesh was solid, warm.
“So I came,” he said. “But — I am sorry; I have been out there for a quarter of an hour, trying to figure out how to let you know that I had arrived. I had heard of doorbells, but could not find the button.”
“There isn’t one at the back door,” I said. My eyes were wide. “You’re here. In the flesh.”
“Yes.”
“But—” I peered behind him. There was something large in the backyard; I couldn’t quite make out its form in the gathering darkness.
“I have been studying your planet for a year,” Hollus said. “Surely you must have suspected we had ways to reach your planet’s surface without attracting undo attention.” He paused. “You invited me for dinner, did you not? I cannot enjoy your food via telepresence.”
I was amazed, thrilled. I turned to look at Susan, then realized I’d forgotten to introduce her. “Hollus, I’d like you to meet my wife, Susan Jericho.”
“Hell,” “oh,” said the Forhilnor.
Susan was quiet for a few seconds, stunned. Then she said, “Hello.”
“Thank you for allowing me to visit your home,” Hollus said.
Susan smiled, then looked rather pointedly at me. “If I’d had more advance notice, I could have cleaned the place up.”
“It is lovely as is,” said Hollus. His eyestalks swiveled, taking in the room. “Great care has obviously gone into the selection of each piece of furniture so that it complements the others.” Susan normally couldn’t stand spiders, but the big guy was clearly charming the pants off her.
In the bright light of the torchiere, I noticed tiny studs, like little diamonds, set into his bubble-wrap skin at each of the two joints in his limbs, and the three joints in his fingers. And a full row of them ran along each of his eyestalks. “Is that jewelry?” I said. “If I knew you were interested in such things, I’d have shown you the gem collections at the ROM. We’ve got some fabulous diamonds, rubies, and opals.”
“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.