Illegal Alien

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Until now, you were insisting publicly that Hask is innocent.”

  “Innocent? No, he is clearly a killer. Clearly insane. You heard the testimony—he is unbalanced by the standards of your people. I tell you now that he is unbalanced by the standards of mine as well.”

  “Hask is the only decent Tosok I’ve met.” Perez paused. “Well, one of the two decent ones, anyway.”

  Kelkad rotated his torso so that his eyes fell on each of his companions in turn. “So one of you is in league with Hask?” he said.

  “Oh, it’s not one of them, Kelkad,” said Perez. “Michaelson, do you have that tape?”

  “Right here, sir.”

  “Play it.”

  Michaelson moved toward the VCR, ejected the tape the Tosoks had been watching—Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—and inserted the one he’d brought with him.

  “This was recorded about an hour ago,” Michaelson said, hitting the play button.

  It took a second for the picture to stabilize. When it did, it showed a view inside the Tosok mothership, obviously taken by a camera mounted on a Tosok’s torso; periodically a hand or part of a U-shaped foot was visible in the field of view. The Tosok was floating down a ship’s corridor, large yellow lighting disks—simulating the sunlight from Alpha Centauri A—alternating with smaller orange ones, simulating Centauri B’s rays.

  The corridor ended at a square door, which slid aside. Standing next to Perez, Kelkad made a sound that was untranslated, but Perez assumed it was shock at which door was being entered.

  The image bounced around as the Tosok with the camera kicked off walls and the ceiling. The voice narrating the tape was the translator’s; it was almost impossible to hear the actual Tosok voice underneath. “All right,” it said, “I am at the main control unit for the particle-beam weapon. Now, give me a moment…” Hands reached into the picture, pulling a panel off of one the instrumentation banks. “There it is,” said the voice. “See that red unit in the center? That’s the circuitry controlled by Kelkad’s transmitter.” The image bounced some more, and the red unit slid out of view as the Tosok jockeyed for position. “There are three lines going into it.”

  A female human voice, crackling with static over a radio: “Just as I thought. Nothing complex—the designers obviously assumed Kelkad’s deadman switch wouldn’t ever be under attack from this end. Now, use the voltmeter I gave you—”

  The human and the Tosok consulted for about ten minutes. Finally, the human said, “Okay, you’ll want to cut the blue one.”

  The Tosok hesitated. “Of course,” said the translated voice, “there is a small chance that I will trigger the weapon when I interrupt the feed. I suppose some last words are in order, in case that happens.” A pause. “How about, ‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your neighbors’?”

  Hands appeared in the picture again—this time, holding small tools—and the image bounced back to show the red unit. “Here we go…” One of the tools snipped what looked like a fiber-optic cable leading into the unit.

  “The weapon did not discharge,” said the Tosok voice.

  “The deadman switch should be deactivated now,” said the human voice.

  In the sixth-floor lounge, Torbat said, “Hask will die for his treachery.”

  As if on cue, the recorded voice said, “As you humans would say, this is one for the history books, so I suppose I should get a decent shot of myself.” The image went dark as a hand reached toward the camera, and there was a clicking sound as it was disengaged from the suit. The view spun wildly as the camera was swung around, showing the Tosok—

  “Seltar!” said Kelkad, the word sounding somewhat different when untranslated. “Kestadt pastalk ge-tongk!”

  “If that’s ‘I thought you were dead!’” said Perez, with relish, “then you’ve got another think coming.”

  “That should take care of everything,” said Seltar, on the tape. “You can go ahead and apprehend the others now.”

  Michaelson moved in and clicked off the VCR. The TV came on in its place, showing Wheel of Fortune.

  “Now,” said Perez. “Which of you is Dodnaskak?”

  A front hand went up meekly.

  “Dodnaskak, you have the right to remain silent—”

  “Where is Hask?” said Kelkad.

  “Don’t worry about that,” said Perez.

  “He is here, no?”

  “That’s not important,” said Perez. “I advise you again to say nothing until you’ve consulted with an attorney.”

  “He is here,” said Kelkad. His breathing orifices were dilating. “I can smell him.”

  “Stay where you are, Kelkad.” Perez gestured at one of the officers, who put a hand on his holster.

  “Do not threaten me, human.”

  “I can’t allow you to leave,” said Perez.

  “We have submitted to enough of your primitive foolishness,” said Kelkad. He began to walk backward, front eyes still on Perez.

  “Stop, Kelkad!” shouted Perez. Michaelson removed his gun from his holster. A moment later the other four officers did the same thing. “Stop, or we’ll shoot!”

  “You will not kill an ambassador,” said Kelkad, whose long strides had already taken him most of the way to the elevator.

  “We are allowed to use force to subdue those resisting arrest,” said Perez.

  Michaelson had his gun trained on Kelkad; the other four officers had theirs aimed at the remaining five Tosoks, who were standing perfectly still, except for their tufts, which were waving like wheat in a high wind.

  “I know Hask is in this building,” said Kelkad, “and he is going to answer to me.”

  “Don’t take another step,” said Perez.

  Michaelson shifted his aim slightly, taking a bead on the controls for calling the elevator. He fired a single shot. The sound was loud, and a lick of flame emerged from the gun’s barrel. The elevator controls exploded in a shower of sparks.

  “You’re next,” said Michaelson, re-aiming at the alien captain.

  “Very well,” said Kelkad. He stopped moving, and began reaching his front hand up toward the ceiling. His back hand, hidden by his torso, must have been rising, too, and when it cleared the top of his dome-shaped head, Perez suddenly realized that there was something shiny and white in its four-fingered grasp.

  There was a flash of light in Kelkad’s palm, and a loud sound like sheet metal being warped. Michaelson was knocked backward against the wall. Perez wheeled around. A neat hole, perhaps an inch wide, had been burned through the center of the man’s chest. His corpse was now slumping to the floor, leaving a long smear of blood on the wall behind him.

  Four more quick flashes of light, four claps of aluminum thunder, and the remaining uniformed cops were all dead as well. “Do not make me kill you, too, Detective Perez,” said Kelkad. “Did you think that after the attack on Hask, I would walk around unarmed?”

  Perez immediately bent down to pick up Michaelson’s gun, now lying on the floor. By the time he got it, Kelkad had already disappeared down the right-hand wing of the building. Perez crabbed sideways, keeping the gun trained on the remaining five Tosoks, who seemed to be unarmed. He picked up a second officer’s gun. But another one of the guns had ended up quite near one of the other Tosoks. Perez couldn’t get at it without exposing himself to physical assault, and he couldn’t run off after Kelkad without the other Tosoks grabbing it, as well as the remaining two revolvers. Perez tucked one gun into his pants’ waist and, keeping the other one aimed at the Tosoks, used his left hand to get his cellular phone out of his jacket pocket to call for reinforcements.

  Hask was in his dorm room on the second floor of Valcour Hall, clearing out his personal belongings. What with the other six Tosoks being taken away to jail, there was little point in him continuing to reside in this giant residence, which, after all, USC did have other uses for.

  It was bad enough being a traitor to his own people, and knowing that he would nev
er see the stars of home again, but at least his few possessions would help him remember his old life. Hask picked up the lostartd disk that had decorated his dorm room. The crack in it where the two halves had been joined together was only visible if he held the disk obliquely to the light. He carefully packed it in the suitcase Frank had given him, wrapping it in two of his tunics for protection.

  Suddenly the sound of a gunshot split the air. It had come from upstairs. Hask felt all four of his hearts pounding out of synchronization—the sound reminded him of the shot that had dug into his own chest on the lawn outside this very building. Moments later he heard the sound of five Tosok blaster discharges. By the absent God—one of them must have brought a blaster along on the journey! Hask hadn’t thought any handheld weapons had been among the mothership’s supplies; no direct contact, after all, had ever been intended with aliens.

  The sounds fell into place in his mind—the other Tosoks were resisting arrest. Another sound, faint and distant, came to his sensitive ears—the echoing slaps of Tosok feet on concrete. One of the Tosoks was coming down the stairs.

  There had been five blaster discharges—presumably five humans now lay dead. And the Tosok with the blaster might very well be coming to get him.

  Valcour Hall was large. If Kelkad—who but the captain would have brought a hand weapon on the journey?—had been up in the sixth-floor lounge, he’d have to come down four flights of stairs. The sound was clearly coming from the stairwell at the end of the other wing; that meant he’d also have to run the length of both wings to reach Hask’s room, which was at the opposite end of the building.

  Hask thought about making his own escape, smashing his dorm-room window and jumping to the ground below. Earth’s gravity was less than that of the home world; it was a significant fall, but probably one that he could survive. Hask would then have to try to escape by running across the campus. But the blaster had a range of several hundred meters—Kelkad could probably pick him off with ease. No—no, he would make his stand here.

  Hask understood much of human law now: he was about to be attacked with a high-energy weapon and he honestly believed his life was in danger. He was entitled to respond with deadly force.

  If only he had a weapon of his own…

  Captain Kelkad rounded one stairwell and then another. He almost lost his balance several times; human steps weren’t deep enough for him, and the hand railings were unusable. But he continued down, passing landing after landing, until he’d reached the second floor. He leaned his front arm against the horizontal bar that operated the door mechanism, clicking the locking bolt aside. He then took a step back and swung the door open, while remaining shielded behind it. He peered around it: no sign of Hask, or anyone else. He paused for a moment. His breathing orifices were spasming, gulping air—but they were also gulping aromas. He could smell Hask’s pheromones wafting this way; Hask must be in his room at the far end of this floor.

  A fitting place for the traitor to die.

  It had taken a minute to get ready, but Hask was prepared now. He could hear the pounding of Kelkad’s feet coming down the perpendicular corridor. Hask looked out his door, down his own stretch of hallway. Ten meters away was one of the glass-and-metal doorways that normally served to muffle sounds; when Valcour Hall was eventually filled with students, anything that helped keep sound down would be welcome. That doorway had been left open for most of the time the Tosoks had been using the facility; a wooden wedge was jammed underneath the door to keep it open.

  Kelkad surely knew that Hask had no handgun; judging by the sound, Kelkad was running down the adjoining corridor at top speed. But Hask knew his captain well: Kelkad wouldn’t open fire at once. First he would want to confront Hask, cursing him as a traitor—

  Suddenly Kelkad appeared in the lobby between the two wings. Hask ducked mostly behind the wall of his room, only his head sneaking out of the doorway to watch. Kelkad lost some speed as he changed directions, but soon was charging down the corridor, knowing that he didn’t have much time, knowing that more human police officers were doubtless rushing to the campus.

  “Hask,” screamed Kelkad. One advantage of having separate channels for the mouths and the respiratory system was that he could still speak clearly while gulping for breath. “You treasonous distalb! You complete—”

  And then he hit the open doorway in the middle of the hall—

  And suddenly the words stopped.

  Kelkad’s momentum—all that angry inertia, all that speed, all his mass—carried him through the doorway.

  He continued on, mostly as a single unit, for a meter or so past the threshold, and then he began to topple—

  —and pieces of him began to fall this way and that, like a child’s creation made out of blocks—

  —cubic hunks of flesh and bone and muscle, their newly exposed faces slick with pink Tosok blood, tumbling to the floor, some bouncing as they hit—

  Hask came out of his room and moved toward the carved-up blocks, each about a foot on a side, that had once been his captain. Some parts were twitching, but most lay completely still.

  Of course, there wasn’t much blood; the valves in the arteries and veins still worked, even in death.

  Hask reached up with his back hand to his own tuft, feeling it as it waved in relief. He looked at the door frame, and at the carving tool stuck to it with Krazy Glue on the left side of the jamb about four feet off the floor. Also visible were twelve of the blue beads glued to the side of the jamb, and to the lintel, and to the metal piece across the bottom of the doorway. What he could not see was the monofilament itself, stretched out in a grid of horizontal and vertical lines across the opening.

  The words of his dear departed friend Cletus Calhoun came back to Hask. “It slices!” Clete had said. “It dices!”

  Indeed it did.

  Hask looked down at his own front hand. One of his fingers had been severed; he’d been in such a hurry setting up his trap that the digit had gotten in the way of the monofilament. But it would grow back in time.

  New noises came to Hask’s ears: the sound of approaching sirens. Soon, the police would be here.

  For this crime, at least, Hask knew he’d get off.

  CHAPTER

  38

  There was still the matter of The People of the State of California v. Hask. After the arrest of the other Tosoks, Hask and Seltar had gone public with their story, and Hask retook the witness stand to tell it all. There was no doubt now that he had indeed killed Cletus Calhoun—Dale had been wrong in assuming Seltar had been directly involved.

  Linda Ziegler made her closing argument, Dale followed with a passionate plea for leniency in his summation and argument, then—as California law allowed—Ziegler got the final word, presenting a summation that reminded the jurors that Cletus Calhoun was dead, and regardless of everything else, someone had to answer for that crime.

  Finally, Judge Pringle took the jury through CALJIC: the California Jury Instructions—Criminal. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she began, “you have heard all the arguments of the attorneys, and now it is my duty to instruct you on the law as it applies to this case. You will have these instructions in written form in the jury room to refer to during your deliberations. You must base your decision on the facts and the law.

  “You have two duties to perform. First, you must determine the facts from the evidence received in the trial and not from any other sources. A ‘fact’ is something proved directly or circumstantially by the evidence or by stipulation. A stipulation is an agreement between attorneys regarding the facts.

  “Second, you must apply the law as I state it to you to the facts, as you determine them, and in this way arrive at your verdict.

  “Note this well: you must accept and follow the law as I state it to you, whether or not you agree with the law. If anything concerning the law said by the attorneys in their arguments or at any other time during the trial conflicts with my explanation of the law, you must follow
my directions…”

  The jury instructions took most of the afternoon, but finally they came to an end:

  “You shall now retire,” said Drucilla Pringle, her voice noticeably hoarse by this point, “and select one of your number to act as foreperson. He or she will preside over your deliberations. In order to reach verdicts, all twelve jurors must agree to the decision. As soon as all of you have agreed upon the verdicts, so that when polled, each may state truthfully that the verdicts express his or her vote, have the forms dated and signed by your foreperson and then return with them to this courtroom.”

  “What if the jury brings in a conviction?” asked Dale. He and Frank had returned to Dale’s office; there was no telling how many hours or days the jury would spend deliberating. Hask was off spending what might be his final few hours of freedom with Seltar.

  “Then we appeal, no?” said Frank.

  Dale sighed. “Everyone says that. But, you know, we can’t appeal a jury verdict per se. They’re not subject to any kind of review. You can only get an appeal if the judge has made a mistake. In this kind of case, it has to be a mistake in law. If Pringle sustained objections she should have overruled, if she disallowed evidence she should have allowed, or if her instructions to the jury were flawed, then we can get an appeal hearing—but that’s no guarantee that the verdict will be overturned.”

  “Oh,” said Frank. “You always hear about appeals. I thought we automatically got another shot.”

  “No. Which is why I asked the question: what do we do if the verdict is guilty?”

  “I don’t know,” said Frank. “Any ideas?”

  “Yes. Have a word with your boss.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There are only two people in this world who are more powerful than that jury. One is the governor of California, and the other is the president of the United States.”

  Frank nodded. “An executive pardon.”

  “Exactly. There’s no way the governor is going to go against Monty Ajax when he knows that Ajax is going to be running in the next gubernatorial race—so that leaves the president.”