The alien’s spherical torso bobbed once. “A pleasant one, I suppose.”
On the video, you can see old Raghubir trying without complete success to suppress a grin. “I mean, do you want an invertebrate or a vertebrate?”
“Are not all your paleontologists humans?” asked the alien. He had a strange way of talking, but I’ll get to that. “Would they not therefore all be vertebrates?”
I swear to God, this is all on tape.
“Of course, they’re all human,” said Raghubir. A small crowd of visitors had gathered, and although the camera didn’t show it, apparently a number of people were looking down onto the Rotunda’s polished marble floor from the indoor balconies one level up. “But some specialize in vertebrate fossils and some in invertebrates.”
“Oh,” said the alien. “An artificial distinction, it seems to me. Either will do.”
Raghubir lifted a telephone handset and dialed my extension. Over in the Curatorial Centre, hidden behind the appalling new Inco Limited Gallery of Earth Sciences — the quintessential expression of Christine’s vision for the ROM — I picked up my phone. “Jericho,” I said.
“Dr. Jericho,” said Raghubir’s voice, with its distinctive accent, “there’s somebody here to see you.”
Now, getting to see a paleontologist isn’t like getting to see the CEO of a Fortune 500; sure, we’d rather you made an appointment, but we are civil servants — we work for the taxpayers. Stilclass="underline" “Who is it?”
Raghubir paused. “I think you’ll want to come and see for yourself, Dr. Jericho.”
Well, the Troodon skull that Phil Currie had sent over from the Tyrrell had waited patiently for seventy million years; it could wait a little longer. “I’ll be right there.” I left my office and made my way down the elevator, past the Inco Gallery — God, how I hate that thing, with its insulting cartoon murals, giant fake volcano, and trembling floors — through the Currelly Gallery, out into the Rotunda, and —
And—
Jesus.
Jesus Christ.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Raghubir might not know the difference between real flesh and blood and a rubber suit, but I do. The thing now standing patiently next to the admissions desk was, without doubt, an authentic biological entity. There was no question in my mind whatsoever. It was a lifeform —
And—
And I had studied life on Earth since its beginnings, deep in the Precambrian. I’d often seen fossils that represented new species or new genera, but I’d never seen any large-scale animal that represented a whole new phylum.
Until now.
The creature was absolutely a lifeform, and, just as absolutely, it had not evolved on Earth.
I said earlier that it looked like a big spider; that was the way the people on the sidewalk had first described it. But it was more complex than that. Despite the superficial resemblance to an arachnid, the alien apparently had an internal skeleton. Its limbs were covered with bubbly skin over bulging muscle; these weren’t the spindly exoskeletal legs of an arthropod.
But every modern Earthly vertebrate has four limbs (or, as with snakes and whales, had evolved from a creature that did), and each limb terminates in no more than five digits. This being’s ancestors had clearly arisen in another ocean, on another world: it had eight limbs, arranged radially around a central body, and two of the eight had specialized to serve as hands, ending in six triple-joined fingers.
My heart was pounding and I was having trouble breathing.
An alien.
And, without doubt, an intelligent alien. The creature’s spherical body was hidden by clothing — what seemed to be a single long strip of bright blue fabric, wrapped repeatedly around the torso, each winding of it going between two different limbs, allowing the extremities to stick out. The cloth was fastened between the arms by a jeweled disk. I’ve never liked wearing neckties, but I’d grown used to tying them and could now do so without looking in a mirror (which was just as well, these days); the alien probably found donning the cloth no more difficult each morning.
Also projecting from gaps in the cloth were two narrow tentacles that ended in what might be eyes — iridescent balls, each covered by what looked to be a hard, crystalline coating. These stalks weaved slowly back and forth, moving closer together, then farther apart. I wondered what the creature’s depth perception might be like without a fixed distance between its two eyeballs.
The alien didn’t seem the least bit alarmed by the presence of me or the other people in the Rotunda, although its torso was bobbing up and down slightly in what I hoped wasn’t a territorial display. Indeed, it was almost hypnotic: the torso slowly lifting and dropping as the six legs flexed and relaxed, and the eyestalks drifting together, then apart. I hadn’t seen the video of the creature’s exchange with Raghubir yet; I thought that perhaps the dance was an attempt at communication — a language of body movements. I considered flexing my own knees and even, in a trick I’d mastered at summer camp forty-odd years ago, crossing and uncrossing my eyes. But the security cameras were on us both; if my guess was wrong, I’d look like an idiot on news programs around the world. Still, I needed to try something. I raised my right hand, palm out, in a salute of greeting.
The creature immediately copied the gesture, bending an arm at one of its two joints and splaying out the six digits at the end of it. And then something incredible happened. A vertical slit opened on the upper segment of each of the two front-most legs, and from the slit on the left came the syllable “hell” and from the one on the right, in a slightly deeper voice, came the syllable “oh.”
I felt my jaw dropping, and a moment later my hand dropped as well.
The alien continued to bob with its torso and weave with its eyes. It tried again: from the left-front leg came the syllable “bon,” and from the right-front came “jour.”
That was a reasonable guess. Much of the museum’s signage is bilingual, both English and French. I shook my head slightly in disbelief, then began to open my mouth — not that I had any idea what I would say — but closed it when the creature spoke once more. The syllables alternated again between the left mouth and the right one, like the ball in a Ping-Pong match:
“Auf” “Wie” “der” “sehen.”
And suddenly words did tumble out of me: “Actually, auf Wiedersehen means goodbye, not hello.”
“Oh,” said the alien. It lifted two of its other legs in what might have been a shrug, then continued on in syllables bouncing left and right. “Well, German is not my first language.”
I was too surprised to laugh, but I did feel myself relaxing, at least a little, although my heart still felt as though it were going to burst through my chest. “You’re an alien,” I said. Ten years of university to become Master of the Bleeding Obvious . . .
“That is correct,” said the leg-mouths. The being’s voices sounded masculine, although only the right one was truly bass. “But why be generic? My race is called Forhilnor, and my personal name is Hollus.”
“Um, pleased to meet you,” I said.
The eyes weaved back and forth expectantly.
“Oh, sorry. I’m human.”
“Yes, I know. Homo sapiens, as you scientists might say. But your personal name is . . . ?”
“Jericho. Thomas Jericho.”
“Is it permissible to abbreviate ‘Thomas’ to ‘Tom’?”
I was startled. “How do you know about human names? And — hell — how do you know English?”
“I have been studying your world; that is why I am here.”