Illegal Alien

*12*

Frank and Dale were meeting over breakfast in the restaurant at the University Hilton Hotel, just on the other side of Figueroa Street from the main USC campus. Frank was eating shredded wheat with skim milk, a half grapefruit, and black coffee. Dale was eating bacon, two fried eggs, and what seemed to be half a loaf’s worth of toast with orange marmalade, all washed down with a pot of coffee with cream and sugar.

“Everybody on the planet is clamoring to interview your client,” said Frank.

Dale nodded, and gulped more coffee. “I know.”

“Do we let them?”

Dale stopped eating long enough to consider this. “I’m not sure. We don’t care one whit about the public as a whole. The only people we’re interested in are the twelve who will end up on the jury. The question is, do we do better if the potential jurors know Hask or not? We’re probably not going to put Hask on the stand, after all, and—”

“We’re not?”

“Frank, you never put your defendant on the stand, unless you can’t avoid it. So, yes, an interview could be our one chance to let the people who might end up on the jury get to know and like Hask. On the other hand, this is a bizarre crime, and if they decide he’s just some weird alien, they may figure he probably did it.”

“So, what do we do?”

Dale wiped his face with the napkin and signaled for the waitress to bring more coffee. “Let him do one interview—one of the biggies. Barbara Walters, maybe. Or Diane Sawyer. Somebody like that.”

“What if it goes badly?” Frank asked. “Can you ask for a change of venue for the trial?”

“To where? The far side of the moon? There’s no getting away from the media coverage this trial is going to get.”

Barbara Walters was wearing her usual solicitous frown. “My guest today is Hask,” she said, “one of the seven alien visitors to Earth. Hask, how are you?”

Dale, who was seated with the alien captain, Kelkad, just outside of camera view, had asked Hask not to wear his sunglasses, even though the camera lights were bothering him. Now, though, watching him squint at Walters, he thought perhaps he’d made a mistake.

“I have seen better days,” said Hask.

Walters nodded sympathetically. “I’m sure you have. You’re free on two-million-dollars bail. What is your assessment of the American legal system?”

“You have a huge number of people in jail.”

Walters seemed taken aback. “Ah, yes. I guess we do.”

“I am told your country has set a record. You have a greater percentage of your population in jail than any other country—even those countries that are referred to as police states.”

“My question was intended more specifically,” said Walters. “I was wondering how the Los Angeles Police Department treated you?”

“It was explained to me that I was to be presumed innocent until proven guilty—and yet I was put in a cage, something my race does not to anything, and I had thought your race only did to animals.”

“You’re saying you were treated poorly?”

“I have been treated poorly, yes.”

“You mean, as a guest on our world, you should be accorded more respect?”

“Not at all. There is nothing special about my status. I imagine if you were interviewing a human being who had been wrongly accused of a crime, he or she would also decry the treatment. Have you ever been imprisoned, Ms. Walters?”

“Me? No.”

“Then you cannot understand.”

“No,” said Walters. “No, I guess not. What is the justice system like on your world?”

“On my world, there is no such thing as crime; allowing a crime to occur would imply that God had ceased to be vigilant over the affairs of her children. Besides, we do not prize material things the way they are prized here, so there is no theft of objects. And everybody has enough to eat, so there is no theft of food, or the means to acquire food.” He paused, then:

“It is not my place to say, but it seems that your legal system is designed backward. The root causes of human crime appear to my no-doubt-ignorant eyes to be poverty and your ability to become addicted to chemicals. But instead of treating these, you devote your energies at the other end, to punishing.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Walters. “But speaking of punishing, do you feel you can get a fair trial?”

Hask’s topknot moved in agitation while he mulled this over. “That is a difficult question. A human is dead—and someone must pay for that. I am not a human. It is perhaps easier to make me pay, and yet…”

“Yes?”

“I am different. But… but your race continues to grow. My lawyer is Dale Rice, and his skin is black. He has told me how his kind were enslaved, were denied the right to vote, to use public facilities, and so on. And yet, in his lifetime, much of that has changed—although I saw in jail that much of it remains, too, just below the surface. Can twelve human beings look upon an alien and judge without prejudice?” He shifted slightly, looking directly at the camera with his orange and green front eyes. “I think yes. I think they can.”

“There’s been a lot of talk about what will happen if you are found guilty.”

“I am given to understand that I may die,” said Hask.

Barbara Walters pursed her thin lips, apparently disturbed by the baldness of the statement. “I mean, what will happen to Earth? What response will your government have?”

“It would be in my own interest to tell you that my people would descend on Earth and, because of the execution of one of their own, would wipe your planet clean of life.” He paused. “Or I could simply tell you that the execution of me would result in the Tosoks leaving, never to return—a cutting off of all contact. But neither of these things is true, and so I will not claim them. As a people, the Tosoks believe in predestination. If it is my fate to be punished for a crime I did not commit, they will accept that. But I tell you, Ms. Walters, I did not kill Cletus Calhoun—why would I? He was my friend. If I am found guilty, it will be an error, for I did not commit this crime.”

“You’re saying we must find you innocent, then?”

“You will find me whatever God intends you to. But I am innocent.”

Dale smiled broadly. Hask couldn’t have done better.

“Kelkad!” shouted a man from the Los Angeles Times as Dale, Hask, and Kelkad left the ABC studios. “Kelkad! What did you think of tonight’s broadcast?”

Captain Kelkad had his front hand up to shield his forward-looking pink and yellow eyes from the glare of the lights. “I thought my crew member presented himself well,” he said.

The crush of reporters was overwhelming, but police were doing their best to keep them back.

“Kelkad,” shouted a woman from CNN, “if Hask is found guilty, will your own people punish him as well?”

Kelkad continued to move forward through the crowd. “We would have to conduct our own investigation of the matter, of course.”

“What have you done yourself about the murder?” shouted a woman from the CBC.

Kelkad paused, as if considering whether to answer. “I suppose there no reason not to tell you. I have, of course, made a full report to my home world via radio. I told them earlier that we found intelligent life on Earth, and have now supplemented that report with news that one of our team has been apprehended, and is facing execution for a crime he denies having committed.”

“How long will it take to get a reply?” asked a man from CBS.

Kelkad’s tuft moved in an odd way, as if surprised that anyone covering this story could be unaware of the basic scientific truths involved. “Alpha Centauri is 4.3 of your light-years from here. It will take, therefore, 4.3 Earth years for my report to arrive, and another 4.3 Earth years for any reply to be received. Obviously.”

A man with a European accent jostled to the front of the crowd. “It’s been over two centuries since you left your home world. What response will they make?”

The alien captain considered this for quite some time. Finally, his tuft parted in the center, a gesture that the public had learned by now was the Tosok equivalent of a shrug. “I have no idea,” he said.