"That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?" he said, opening the pot and stirring the vegetables surrounding the meat.

"Yeah," said Emily.

Sarah appeared in the doorway. "Something smells good."

"Thanks," said Don, then, shouting, "Carl! Dinner!"

It took a few minutes to get everyone seated and served, and then Don said, "So, what are you going to send the aliens?"

"We’re going to do what they asked. We’re going to set up a website, based at U of T, and let people from all over the world answer the questions the aliens asked. We’ll pick at random a thousand completed surveys, and send them off."

Carl was reaching for the dinner rolls. "Hey," Don said, "come on, Carl. Don’t reach halfway across the table. Ask your sister; she’ll pass them."

Carl sighed. "Can I have the rolls?"

"Say please," Emily said.

"Dad!"

Don was tired. "Emily, give your brother the rolls."

Scowling, she did so.

"Why do you suppose they want a thousand sets of responses?" continued Don.

"Why not just, you know, send a summary — like, X percent chose answer A, Y percent chose B, and so on."

"This isn’t Family Feud," said Sarah.

Don chuckled.

"Seriously," said Sarah, "I suspect it’s because if you summarize it all, you’d never see the seemingly contradictory stuff. You know, saying that X percent are against abortion and Y percent are for the death penalty doesn’t let you draw out the fact that, often, it’s the same people who are pro-life and also pro-capital punishment.

Or, for that matter, the aliens might consider my own beliefs to be bizarrely contradictory. Being both pro-choice and anti-capital punishment could be interpreted as meaning you’re in favor of murdering innocent children but against killing those who could be said to deserve it. I’d never put it that way, of course, but combinations like that are interesting, and I guess they don’t want them to get lost in the data."

"Sounds like a plan," Don said, while carving another piece of roast for Carl. "But what about your own answers?"

"Sorry?"

"You figured out that it was a survey," he said. "Surely one of the thousand sets of answers sent should be yours."

"Oh, I don’t know about that…" Sarah said.

"Sure, Mom," said Carl. "You’ve got to include your own answers. It’s your right."

"Well, we’ll see," said Sarah. "Emily, would you please pass the peas?"

Chapter 23

After lunch, Lenore headed back to the University, and Don made his way down to the Art Gallery. He’d been impressed by the young lady’s Scrabble play. She had a terrific vocabulary, a good strategic sense, and didn’t take too long to make her moves. Although he did ultimately win, she had the best single turn, placing oxlip vertically starting at the triple-word-score square in the upper-left corner of the board.

The Art Gallery of Ontario had the world’s largest collection of Henry Moore sculptures, as well as major collections of European Old Masters and Canada’s Group of Seven, plus a permanent exhibition of Helena van Vliet watercolors — and although Don had seen all of those before, he enjoyed looking at them again. But it was the traveling exhibition of blown glass by Robyn Herrington that had really brought him here today, and he took his time admiring each piece. He had a fondness for art forms that required genuine manual skill; so often, today’s digital arts substituted patience for real talent.

The AGO was popular with tourists, and he had to put up with being jostled a fair bit — but at least it didn’t actually hurt to be bumped by people anymore; until recently, he often used to ache for hours after colliding with a wall or another person.

His favorite Herrington piece, he decided, was a yellow fish with big blue eyes and giant pink lips; somehow, out of molten glass, the artist had imbued great personality into it.

After he’d seen his fill, Don headed outside and started making his way back to the university to pick up the pile of papers. Rush hour had begun and the traffic on the streets was already bumper-to-bumper. By the time he got back to the fourteenth floor of the McLennan tower, it was a quarter to five, but, as promised, Lenore was still there.

"Hi, Don," she said. "I was beginning to think you’d fallen into a black hole."

He smiled. "Sorry. Lost track of time."

"How was the exhibition?"

"Terrific, actually."

"I put your papers into a couple of bags for you, so they’d be easier to carry."

And who said young people today were inconsiderate? "Thanks."

"It’s too bad it’s so late," Lenore said. "The subway will be jam-packed, at least for the next ninety minutes. Sardine City."

"I hadn’t thought about that," he said. It had been years since he’d had to come home from downtown in rush hour. A tin can full of sweaty, exhausted people didn’t sound very pleasant.

"Look," said Lenore, "I’m about to head back to the Duke of York."

"Again?" said Don, astonished.