Illegal Alien

Dale kept his face impassive. 'Do you, now?'

'That is my option, no? I wish to change to a plea of guilty.'

Dale looked over at Frank, whose eyebrows were high on his forehead. 'You realize,' said Dale, looking back at Hask, 'that if you plead guilty, the presentation of evidence will end, and Judge Pringle will charge the jury with sentencing you.'

'Yes.'

'And,' said Dale, 'the sentence they will likely call for is execution. Often, the death penalty is not invoked even when applicable to the crime if there’s still a shadow of a doubt. A jury might feel comfortable sentencing you to life imprisonment, but generally will want to be convinced to a higher degree before calling for execution. But if you admit your guilt, any remaining doubt in the jury’s mind is eliminated.'

'I am prepared for the consequences.'

Dale shrugged. 'It is, as you say, your prerogative. As your lawyer, I should inform you that a better option would be for you to simply dispatch me to Linda Ziegler’s office and tell her that we might be receptive to a deal. We could plea-bargain this down from murder one to manslaughter — you’ll certainly not be executed, and probably get off with five years or so.'

'Whatever,' said Hask. 'Just so long as the presentation of evidence ends.'

'All right,' said Dale. 'But, look, I’ve gone to a lot of trouble preparing my summation and argument. You really owe me a chance to present it — at least to you and Frank.'

Mask’s tuft waved in confusion. 'I hardly see the point of that.'

'Humor me,' said Dale.

'There is no reason to—'

'I think there is,' said Dale. 'Please.'

Hask made a very human-sounding sigh. 'Very well.'

'Thank you,' said Dale, standing up in the small dorm room. He hooked his thumbs into his suspenders and turned to face a nonexistent jury. 'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’d like to thank you for your attention during this very difficult trial. It’s been a case like no other, with issues that range far beyond this courthouse—' He paused, interrupting himself. 'That’s where Linda would jump up and object,' he said, smiling. 'Can’t urge the jury to take anything into account other than the facts of the case, as presented during the trial.' He switched back into courtroom mode. 'Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, let us review the evidence.

'We’ve heard from Captain Kelkad that his crew originally consisted of eight Tosoks, including himself. We heard, too, that one of those Tosoks, named Seltar, died during the flight to Earth, and the defendant, Hask, performed a harvesting of her organs, which was the normal, proper procedure should someone die during the mission.

'Now, the People would have you believe that this unforeseen event — the need to carve up a corpse — turned out to be unexpectedly titillating to Hask, so much so that he found himself overcome by an irresistible urge to have a similar experience again. And, when the opportunity presented itself, according to the People, Hask did indeed repeat the experience, killing and brutally dissecting the body of Cletus Robert Calhoun.

'We also heard that Tosok blood was found at the crime scene — but no evidence has been presented conclusively linking that blood to Hask. Also at the scene was a bloody mark that might be a Tosok footprint, but, again, the People utterly failed to demonstrate that this footprint belonged to Hask.

'Now, it is true that my client did indeed shed his skin at approximately the same time that Cletus Calhoun was killed. The People have stressed this fact, suggesting that Hask induced this shedding because he had ended up covered in Dr. Calhoun’s blood.

'Apparently corroborating that the shedding was induced was the testimony of Stant, another Tosok — who turned out to be Hask’s half brother. And it was revealed that, as was required by the peculiarities of Tosok biology, Hask and Stant must have been born within days of each other, and that their shedding schedules should have been closely synchronized. But, as we all saw in this courtroom' — Dale winked here, acknowledging to Hask and Frank that he wasn’t completely caught up in this fantasy closing argument—'Stant himself shed his skin without any apparent inducement some five months after Hask did.

'Now, as this trial progressed a horrible thing happened. A deranged human being shot the defendant. Judge Pringle will doubtless instruct you, quite rightly, that your verdict should not be influenced one way or the other by this event per se. That one individual saw fit to shoot Hask does not make him guilty. Neither, of course, should sympathy over his wound lead you to find him innocent. Indeed, you should probably ignore the incident altogether.

'But one person who could not ignore it was Dr. Carla Hernandez, the human surgeon who aided the Tosok named Stant in removing the bullet from Hask. Dr. Hernandez helped prepare Hask’s body for surgery, and in so doing, she saw on his body what she clearly recognized as scar tissue — scar tissue left behind by previous incisions.

'We’ve heard much about the Tosok powers of recuperation, of course. Why, we’ve even heard testimony that they can regenerate not just damaged limbs, but damaged organs as well. So, it goes without saying that any prominent, fresh-looking scars on Hask’s body must be of quite recent origin — given enough time, they would have disappeared completely.

'But what would have caused such scars? The answer, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is obvious — they were caused by the surgical removal of organs from Hask’s own body.

'When Dr. Nobilio and Captain Kelkad returned to the Tosok mothership, they confirmed what I’d come to suspect myself: that several organs one would have expected Hask to have harvested from Seltar’s body were also missing.

'Now, is Hask some sort of interstellar monster, so hungry for body parts that not only did he devour some of his dead colleague’s ones, and some of Dr. Calhoun’s, but that he also went so far as to remove some of his own organs for that purpose?' Dale paused, looking first at Frank, then at Hask.

'Of course not. What a ridiculous notion! After all, that arm in his back might give Hask certain advantages at manual tasks over humans, but surely those advantages don’t extend to performing surgery on himself.

'And that, ladies and gentlemen, means that the surgical scars on Hask’s own body were inflicted by somebody else. Now, who could that have been?

Surely if it were a human being, Hask would simply tell us who it was — what an irony that would have been for our UFO-nut friends! Aliens come to Earth, and humans take out their organs, instead of the other way around! But that is not what happened here. No, clearly Hask was operated on by another Tosok — the fact that the incisions were closed with something other than suture proves that. But why? And which of the remaining six members of the starship’s crew did it?

'Well, of course, we’ve seen that Stant is also highly skilled in surgical matters — it was he, after all, who removed the bullet from Hask at the LAC-USC Medical Center. And indeed Stant invoked the Fifth Amendment over the question of whether an individual Tosok’s blood could be identified by chemical analysis.'

Dale lowered his voice conspiratorially. 'Linda would object strongly here, too — I’m really not allowed to touch on the motive of a witness for taking the Fifth.' He hooked his thumbs in his suspenders again, readopting his courtroom persona. 'The obvious initial conclusion, of course, is that Stant believed his own half brother, Hask, to be guilty, but knew that, as close relatives, their blood types would be similar, and that any blood evidence that tended to convict Hask would also serve as evidence against Stant.

'A more direct interpretation is that the Tosok blood found at the crime scene was Stant’s own — which, of course, is why he wouldn’t want to testify that it could be identified as such. But I favor the first interpretation, that Stant feels Hask is guilty, but knew the blood evidence could as easily point to Stant himself as to Hask. Yes, I’m sure Stant believes Hask did it — but, ladies and gentlemen, I myself do not believe this.

'I do not believe that Hask killed Cletus Calhoun, and I do not believe that the shedding of his skin was induced. Rather, I believe Hask shed his skin at precisely the natural time for it to be shed. It happened five months prior to his half brother’s shedding because Hask was out of hibernation not for the few days that dealing with the impact in our solar system’s Kuiper belt would have required — but rather because he was out of hibernation for almost half a year!'

Frank Nobilio sat up straight in his chair. 'God!'

'And why,' continued Dale, 'would he have stayed out of hibernation so much longer than he had claimed? The answer is simple: so that organs surgically removed from his body could regenerate internally.

'We have heard, ladies and gentlemen, that a Tosok can live for extended periods with only two hearts, instead of four, and only two lungs, instead of four — and the scars Dr. Hernandez noticed on Hask’s left side indicate that his original two left hearts and his two left lungs had indeed been surgically removed, along with his left-side gebarda organs.

'Now, Dr. Nobilio found in the Tosok sickbay four Tosok hearts, four Tosok lungs, and four Tosok gebardas — but none of the organs of which Tosoks have only one apiece. And, I have no doubt, ladies and gentlemen, that if genetic tests were performed on the right hearts and right lungs found there, they would indeed be proven to be those of Seltar. But I submit to you that the left lungs and left hearts are not Seltar’s, but Hask’s own.

'The truth of the matter, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is that Seltar did not die during the Kuiper-belt accident, but, in collusion with Hask, her death was faked. He removed two of her hearts, two of her lungs, and two of her gebardas, and she removed two each of his. Then she and he stayed out of hibernation, letting replacements grow within them. A cursory check would have shown roughly enough body parts to corroborate Hask’s story that Seltar was dead, but in fact she is not. She hid aboard the Tosok mothership, and while Hask came to Earth with great fanfare, streaking across the skies of the world and ostentatiously splashing down in the Atlantic, Seltar made a more stealthful landing somewhere else, using the landing craft that Hask told us and his ship-mates had been lost during the collision. It is she who killed Cletus Robert Calhoun, and, for reasons of his own, Hask has chosen to cover for her.

'I urge you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to find the only just verdict possible: acquit Hask of this crime that he most assuredly did not commit, and let us now begin a search for the real murderer — wherever she may be.'

*36*

Dale heaved his massive bulk back into a chair in Hask’s dorm room.

'Well?' he said.

'God,' said Frank, again. 'God. Hask, is it true?'

Hask’s tuft was moving in ways Dale had never seen before.

'Hask,' said Frank again, 'is it true? Is Seltar still alive?'

'There are issues here,' said Hask slowly, 'of which neither of you are aware. Do not mention your speculation anywhere else, Dale.'

'This is the trial of the century,' said Dale. 'I’m not going to lose it.'

Hask’s tuft swayed in negation. 'It is the trial of the millennium,' he said. 'It is the trial of all time — and it is not being played out in the tiny confines of Judge Pringle’s courtroom. I beseech you, Dale, do not pursue this.'

'Why, Hask? I need a reason.'

Hask was silent for a time, then: 'Frank, you are a powerful person on this world, no?'

'It would be more correct to say I work for a powerful person,' said Frank.

'Regardless of the subtleties, you have access to extraordinary resources. If I asked you to take me somewhere, you could arrange the trip in such a way as to attract no public attention, yes?'