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it’s an alien artifact,” said the black CSIS agent.
    “So?” I said.
    “Well, I mean, it should be in official hands.”
    “I work for the government, too,” I said defiantly.
    “I mean it should be in secure hands.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, ah, because.”
    I don’t accept “because” as an argument from my six-year-old son; I wasn’t about to accept it here. “I can’t turn it over to you—you heard what Hollus said about it blowing up. I think Hollus was quite clear about how things are going to be—and you gentlemen do not have a role. And so,” I looked at the white guy, the one with the French accent, “I bid you adieu.”

3
     
     
     
    It had started eight months ago with a cough.
    I’d ignored it. Like an idiot, I’d ignored the evidence right in front of me.
    I’m a scientist. I should have known better.
    But I’d told myself it was just a result of my dusty work environment. We use dental drills to carve rock away from fossils. Of course, we wear masks when doing such work—most of the time (we remember to put on safety goggles, too—most of the time). Still, despite the ventilation system, there’s a lot of fine rock dust in our air; you can see the layers it leaves on piles of books and papers, on unused equipment.
    Besides, I first noticed it in the sweltering heat of last August; an inversion layer had been hanging over Toronto, and air-quality advisories were being issued. I thought maybe the cough would stop when we got away from the city, got up to our cottage. And so it seemed to.
    But when we came south again, the cough returned. Still, I’d hardly noticed it.
    Until the blood came up.
    Just a bit.
    When I blew my nose, there had been blood in my mucus often enough in winter. Dry air will do that. But this was the sultry Toronto summer. And what I was producing wasn’t mucus; it was phlegm, kicked up from deep in my chest, maneuvered off the roof of my mouth with the tip of my tongue, and transferred to a tissue to get rid of it.
    Phlegm, flecked with blood.
    I noted it, but nothing similar happened for a couple of weeks. And so I didn’t give it any further thought.
    Until it happened again, late in September.
    If I’d been paying better attention, I would have noticed my cough getting more persistent. I’m the head of the paleobiology department; I suppose I should have done something, should have complained to the guys in Facilities about the dry air, about the mineral dust floating around.
    The second time there was a lot of blood in my phlegm. And there was more the next day.
    And the day after.
    And so, finally, I had made an appointment to see Dr. Noguchi.
     
     
    The Hollus simulacrum had left about 4:00 in the afternoon; I normally worked until 5:00, and so I walked— staggered might be a better term—back to my office and sat, stunned, for a few minutes. My phone kept ringing, so I turned it off; it seemed that every media outlet in the world wanted to talk to me, the man who had been alone with the alien. I directed Dana, the departmental assistant, to transfer all calls to Dr. Dorati’s office. Christine would be in her element dealing with the press. Then I turned to my computer and began to type up notes. I realized that there should be a record, a chronicle, of everything I saw and everything I learned. I typed furiously for perhaps an hour, then left the ROM via the staff entrance.
    A large crowd had gathered outside—but, thankfully, they were all up by the main entrance, half a block away. I looked briefly for any sign of the spaceship landing that had occurred earlier that day; there was nothing. I then hurried down the concrete steps into Museum subway station, with its sickly yellow-beige wall tiles.
    During rush hour, most people head north to the suburbs. As usual, I rode the train south, right down University Avenue, around the loop at Union station, and then up the Yonge line all the way to North York Centre; it was hardly the direct route, but