Illegal Alien

*14*

Linda Ziegler arrived at Valcour Hall late in the afternoon. She didn’t want to see the murder site again, nor did she want to speak to any of the Tosoks. Rather, she went straight to Packwood Smathers’s room. She knocked on his door, and he called out for whoever it was to come in.

“Hello, Dr. Smathers,” she said, opening the door. “My name is Linda Ziegler, and I’m a deputy district attorney here in Los Angeles County.”

Smathers was working at a desk mounted against one wall. He knit his bushy white eyebrows together. “I want legal counsel present.”

Ziegler smiled her best, brightest smile. “Dr. Smathers, you’re not a suspect for anything. I understand you were treated unpleasantly by the police earlier, and on behalf of—well, on behalf of Americans in general—I apologize for that. I know you’re a visitor to our country, and I’m coming to you now for some help.”

Smathers sounded dubious. “Help?”

“Yes, sir. We have a problem facing us in alien—well, I guess ‘alien physiology’ would be the right term, and I’m told you’re the top person in that field.”

Like many an arrogant man, Smathers was apparently willing to be self-effacing so long as someone else was simultaneously singing his praises. “Well, as much as one can be—until recently, everything I’ve dealt with has been purely hypothetical, but, still, despite the way Calhoun twisted it on TV, so far I’ve seen nothing in the Tosoks that invalidates my basic work.”

Ziegler moved fully into the room, taking the other chair. Smathers’s bed was a mess, but otherwise the room was well kept. “And—do forgive me, Professor; I freely admit I’m in over my head here—but what exactly was your basic work in this area?”

Smathers seemed to be warming slightly. “Well, simply, that all life-rorms, no matter where they’re from, must adhere to certain basic engineering principles in their fundamental body plan.”

“Fundamental body plan?” said Ziegler.

Smathers nodded. “Our Tosok friends are vertebrates. Reduced to simplest terms, the Tosok body is a hollow tube, with an internal support structure, very much like our own.” The Canadian paused. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the Tosoks don’t like talking about the insides of bodies—it’s a taboo with them. It’s like us and nudity: it’s perfectly acceptable for a human to be seen nude by his doctor, but outside of that context, it takes on a completely different meaning. The Tosoks don’t show us their medical texts, nor will they look at ours. Stant—he’s the Tosok biologist—seems downright embarrassed by my curiosity about their inner workings.”

Ziegler nodded.

“Anyway,” said Smathers, “the Tosoks differ in several noticeable ways from the vertebrates of Earth. Our vertebrates have body parts that come either singly or in pairs: we have one heart, one liver, one spleen, one stomach, but two lungs, two kidneys, two eyes, two arms, two legs, and so on. Because of the pairing of our body parts, we have bilateral symmetry.”

Ziegler nodded. “Right,” she said.

Smathers smiled. “Right—exactly. And left. Just two sides. The Tosoks, on the other hand, have quadrilateral symmetry. Their body parts either come singly or in groups of four. Stant has at least admitted to that much.”

“That’s not true,” said Ziegler. “They’ve got two arms and two legs, and their eyes come in pairs.”

Smathers nodded. “Yes, yes. That’s the way it appears superficially. It’s hard when looking at the product of billions of years of evolution to see the underlying architecture. But let’s consider a hypothetical primitive creature from Alpha Centauri. I suspect it had a body plan like so.” He took a lined pad off his desk and drew a large central circle on it with four smaller circles clustered around it, like a cafe table and chairs as seen on a blueprint. “This is a view from above,” he said. “The central circle is the animal’s torso. Each of the four circles is the cross section of a limb, looking down from the shoulder. I suspect in early Centauri lifeforms, the four limbs were undifferentiated, and were all used for locomotion—as flagella in aquatic forms, and as legs in land-dwelling ones. You can call these four limbs north, east, south, and west.” He wrote the letters N, E, S, and W next to them.

“Well,” said Smathers, “you’ve seen that the Tosoks have two arms—one in front, almost like a trunk; and another, more slender one, in back, where you’d expect a tail to be. And they have two legs, one on either side. Obviously, what happened through evolution is that the east and west limbs became the sole locomotor appendages, and the north and south ones shortened, so that they no longer touched the ground, freeing them up for manipulatory uses.

“A Tosok also has four orifices on the head. Two of the orifices seem to have specialized for breathing, and two more—the ones directly above the arms—have specialized for the intake of food.”

“And the eyes?” said Ziegler.

“Right—the four eyes. I suspect they were originally evenly spaced around the head, but over time have migrated together forming two pairs, each of which is capable of stereoscopic vision.”

Ziegler nodded, impressed. “All right,” she said, “there’s no doubt you’ve got a good handle on the basic physiology.”

“As good as anyone can have without ever having seen the insides of a Tosok, yes.”

“Then how do you kill one?”

Smathers visibly pulled back. “I— I beg your pardon?”

“If the jury finds Hask guilty, we’re going to ask for the death penalty. We’ll need a way to execute him.”

“Oh.”

“Well, how do you kill one?”

“I, ah—well, gee, that’s a good question.”

“They figured out how to kill our kind easily enough,” said Ziegler bitterly.

“We, ah, don’t have the death penalty in Canada,” said Smathers. “I don’t know if I’m really the right person for this job.”

“My sources tell me you’re damn near the only person for this job. The state of California will compensate you for your time, Professor, but we really do have to know how to kill a Tosok.” She smiled at him. “Think of it as a puzzle in science.”

Smathers scratched his chin through his white beard. “Well, you can kill just about anything by depriving it of oxygen.”

Ziegler shook her head. “It has to be quick and painless; otherwise, it will be deemed unconstitutional cruel-and-unusual punishment. It also can’t be gruesome; the public won’t stand for that.”

Smathers considered for a moment. “That makes it difficult. Hanging is out—Tosoks have no necks; having eyes in the back of their heads obviates the need for one. And using either lethal injection or a gas chamber depends on fine details of physiology; I can suggest all kinds of possible poisons, but can’t guarantee any of them will work quickly or without causing pain.”

“Electrocution?”

“Yeah, probably—but, again, I can’t guarantee that it’ll be painless or quick for a Tosok.”

“Well, I need you to find a way.”

Smathers shook his head. “Really, Ms. Ziegler, I—”

“And, of course,” said Ziegler, “we would make the corpse available to you after execution.” She paused. “It might be your only opportunity to ever study alien anatomy.”

Smathers frowned for a very long time, obviously at war with himself. Then, at last, he spoke. “As you know, we don’t have tissue samples or X rays of a Tosok; they’ve been quite shy about such matters. This really isn’t an easy problem.” He paused again, then: “Leave it with me, Ms. Ziegler. I’m sure I can work out a method.” But then he shook his head and was quiet for a long moment. “I just hope,” he said softly, “that I can live with myself after I do.”