Hollus moved over to stand next to me. “They are ready to set up the equipment for the first case.”
I moved forward and used another key on the display case, unlocking the angled glass cover and swinging it up. The hinge locked into place at the maximally open position. There was no chance of the glass sheet coming crashing down while people worked inside — museums might not have always taken appropriate precautions to safeguard their employees in the past, but they did do so now.
The scanner consisted of a large metal stand with a dozen or so complex-looking articulated arms coming off it, each one ending in a translucent sphere about the size of a softball. One of the Wreeds was working on deploying the arms — some above the case, some below, more on either side — while the other Wreed made numerous adjustments to an illuminated control panel attached to the supporting stand. He seemed displeased with the results being displayed, and continued to fiddle with the controls.
“It is delicate work,” said Hollus. Her compatriot stood silently next to her. “Scanning at this resolution demands a minimum of vibrations.” She paused. “I hope we will not have problems with the subway trains.”
“They’ll stop running for the night soon,” Christine said. “And although you can feel the trains go by downstairs in the Theatre ROM, I’ve never really noticed them making the rest of the museum vibrate.”
“We will probably be fine,” said Hollus. “But we should also refrain from using the elevator while the scans are being made.”
The other Forhilnor sang something, and Hollus said, “Excuse us,” to Christine and me. The two of them scuttled across the gallery and helped move another piece of equipment. It was clear that operating the scanner wasn’t Hollus’s field, but she was useful as an extra set of hands.
“Extraordinary, said Christine, looking at the aliens milling about the gallery.
I wasn’t inclined to make small talk with her, but, well, she was my boss. “Aren’t they?” I said, without much feeling.
“You know,” she said, “I never really believed in aliens. I mean, I know what you biologists say: there’s nothing special about the Earth, there should be life everywhere, yatitty-yatitty-ya. But still, down deep, I thought we were alone in the universe.”
I decided not to contradict her about whether there was anything special about out planet. “I’m glad they’re here,” I said. “I’m glad they came to visit us.”
Christine yawned expansively — quite a sight with her horsey mouth, although she tried to hide it behind the back of her hand. It was getting late — and we’d only just begun. “Sorry,” she said when she was done. “I just wish there was some way to get Hollus to do some public programming here. We could—”
At that moment, Hollus rejoined us. “They are ready to do the first scan,” she said. “The equipment will run on its own, and it would be better if we all left the room to avoid vibrations.”
I nodded, and the six of us headed out into the Rotunda. “How long will the scan take?”
“About forty-three minutes for the first case,” said Hollus.
“Well,” said Christine, “no point just standing around. Why don’t we go have a look at some Far Eastern artifacts?” Those galleries were also on the first floor, rather close to our current location.
Hollus spoke to the three other aliens, presumably to get their consent. “That would be fine,” she said, turning back to us.
I let Christine take the lead; it was her museum, after all. We crossed the Rotunda diagonally again, passed the totem poles, and entered the T. T. Tsui Galleries of Chinese Art (named for the Hong Kong businessperson whose donation had made them possible); the ROM had the finest collection of Chinese artifacts in the western world. We passed through the galleries, with their cases full of ceramics, bronzes, and jades, and entered the Chinese Tomb area. For decades, the tomb had been located outside, exposed to Toronto’s weather, but now it was here, on the first floor of the ROM’s terrace galleries. The outside wall was glass, looking out on a slick, wet Bloor Street; a Pizza Hut and McDonald’s faced in from the other side of the road. The roof was tented skylights; raindrops beat against them.
The tomb components — two giant arches, two stone camels, two giant human figures, and the huge tumulus dome — had no velvet ropes around them. The other Forhilnor, Barbulkan, reached out to touch the carvings on the nearer archway with his six-fingered hand. I imagined that if you did a lot of work via telepresence, getting to really touch things with your own flesh-and-blood fingers was a special thrill.
“These tomb pieces,” said Christine, standing by one of the stone camels, “were purchased by the museum in 1919 and 1920 from George Crofts, a British fur trader and art dealer stationed in Tianjin. They supposedly come from the tomb complex at Fengtaizhuang in Hebei province and are said to belong to the famous Ming-dynasty general Zu Dashou, who died in 1656 AD.”
The aliens murmured among themselves. They were clearly fascinated; maybe they didn’t build monuments to their own dead.
“Chinese society at this time was shaped by the idea that the universe was a highly ordered place,” continued Christine. “The tomb and tomb figures here reflect this idea of a structured cosmos, and—”
At first I thought it was thunder.
But that wasn’t it.
A sound was ripping through the tomb area, echoing loudly off the stone walls.
A sound I’d only ever heard before on TV and in the movies.
The sound of rapid gunfire.
Foolishly, we ran from the tomb toward the sound. The Forhilnors easily outpaced us humans, and the Wreeds brought up the rear. We hurried through the T. T. Tsui Galleries and out into the darkened Rotunda.
The sound was coming from the Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall — from the Burgess Shale exhibit. I couldn’t imagine who was being shot at: besides the security guard at the staff entrance, we were the only people in the building.
Christine had a cellular phone with her; she’d already flipped it open and was presumably dialing 9-1-1. Another volley of gunfire split the air, and here, closer, I was able to discern an additional, more familiar sound: rock shattering. I suddenly realized what was happening. Somebody was shooting at the priceless, half-billion-year-old Burgess Shale fossils.
The gunfire stopped just as the Wreeds were arriving in the Rotunda. We had hardly been quiet: Christine was talking into her cellular, our footfalls had echoed in the galleries, and the Wreeds, utterly mystified — maybe they had never developed projectile weapons — were chatting animatedly to each other despite my attempts to shush them.
Even partially deafened by the sound of their own gunfire, the people shooting up the fossils evidently heard the sounds we had made. First one and then another emerged from the Exhibition Hall. The one who came out first was covered with wood chips and rock fragments, and he was holding some sort of semiautomatic weapon — a submachine gun, maybe. He aimed it at us.
That, at last, was enough to get us to do the sensible thing. We froze. But I glanced over at Christine and made a questioning face, silently asking whether she’d gotten through to the 9-1-1 operator. She nodded yes, and tipped the case of her cellular just enough so that I could see by its glowing faceplate that she was still connected. Thank God the emergency operator had had the good sense to fall silent as soon as Christine had.
“Holy God,” said the man holding the gun. He half turned to face his younger partner, who had a crew cut. “Holy God, will you look at them things?” He had an accent from the southern U.S.
“Aliens,” said the man with the crew cut, as if trying on the word for size; he had a similar accent. Then, a moment later, deciding that the word indeed fit, he said it again, more forcefully. “Aliens.”