Calculating God Read Free Page A

seventy million years,” I said.
    “Precisely” “the” “sort” “of” “thing” “I” “have” “come” “to” “see.”
    “You said you’re a scientist. You are a paleontologist, like me?”
    “Only in part,” said the alien. “My original field was cosmology, but in recent years my studies have moved on to larger matters.” He paused for a moment. “As you have probably gathered by this point, my colleagues and I have observed your Earth for some time—enough to absorb your principal languages and to make a study of your various cultures from your television and radio. It has been a frustrating process. I know more about your popular music and food-preparation technology than I ever cared to—although I am intrigued by the Popeil Automatic Pasta Maker. I have also seen enough sporting events to last me a lifetime. But information on scientific matters has been very hard to find; you devote little bandwidth to detailed discussions in these areas. I feel as though I know a disproportionate amount about some specific topics and nothing at all about others.” He paused. “There is information we simply cannot acquire on our own by listening in to your media or through our own secret visits to your planet’s surface. This is particularly true about scarce items, such as fossils.”
    I was getting a bit of a headache as his voice bounced from mouth to mouth. “So you want to look at our specimens here at the ROM?”
    “Exactly,” said the alien. “It was easy for us to study your contemporary flora and fauna without revealing ourselves to humanity, but, as you know, well-preserved fossils are quite rare. The best way to satisfy our curiosity about the evolution of life on this world seemed to be by asking to see an existing collection of fossils. No need to reinvent the lever, so to speak.”
    I was still flabbergasted by this whole thing, but there seemed no reason to be uncooperative. “You’re welcome to look at our specimens, of course; visiting scholars come here all the time. Is there any particular area you’re interested in?”
    “Yes,” said the alien. “I am intrigued by mass extinctions as turning points in the evolution of life. What can you tell me about such things?”
    I shrugged a little; that was a big topic. “There’ve been five mass extinctions in Earth’s history that we know of. The first was at the end of the Ordovician, maybe 440 million years ago. The second was in the late Devonian, something like 365 million years ago. The third, and by far the largest, was at the end of the Permian, 225 million years ago.”
    Hollus moved his eyestalks so that his two eyes briefly touched, the crystalline coatings making a soft clicking sound as they did so. “Say” “more” “about” “that” “one.”
    “During it,” I said, “perhaps ninety-six percent of all marine species disappeared, and three-quarters of all terrestrial vertebrate families died out. We had another mass extinction late in the Triassic Period, about 210 million years ago. We lost about a quarter of all families then, including all labyrinthodonts; it was probably crucial to the dinosaurs—creatures like that guy you’re holding—coming into ascendancy.”
    “Yes,” said Hollus. “Continue.”
    “Well, and the most-famous mass extinction happened sixty-five million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous.” I indicated the Troödon skull again. “That’s when all the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mosasaurs, ammonites, and others died out.”
    “This creature would have been rather small,” said Hollus, hefting the skull.
    “True. From snout to tip of tail, no more than five feet. A meter and a half.”
    “Did it have larger relatives?”
    “Oh, yes. The largest land animals that ever lived, in fact. But they all died out in that extinction, paving the way for my kind—a class we call mammals—to take over.”
    “In” “cred” “i” “ble,” said Hollus’s mouths. Sometimes