Illegal Alien

*22*

A number of lesser witnesses occupied the next two weeks—other Tosoks, experts on deviant human psychology, and a variety of individuals who tried to shore up the State’s shaky case for premeditation, which seemed to hinge on two facts: first, that Hask had arranged to stay back at the dorm while the others went to the Stephen Jay Gould lecture, knowing Calhoun was also staying back, and, second, that to induce his skin shedding, he must have thought in advance to bring the chemical agent down from the mothership.

Finally, though, it was time for the People’s most compelling bit of evidence. Linda Ziegler rose from her place at the prosecution table. “If it pleases the Court,” she said, “the People would now like to introduce a segment of the videotape made by the decedent while he was aboard the Tosok mothership.”

“Mr. Rice?”

Dale had fought long and hard before the trial began to get this suppressed, but Judge Pringle had ruled it admissible, and the appeals court had agreed with her. “No objection.”

“Please proceed.”

Two large color-television monitors were mounted on the walls of the courtroom, one facing the jury box, the other facing the spectators. In addition, Judge Pringle had a smaller TV on her bench, as did the prosecution and the defense. The bailiff dimmed the lights in the room…

All the still pictures of the Apollo 11 crew walking on the moon have one thing in common: they all show Buzz Aldrin, for the simple reason that it was Neil Armstrong who was holding the camera. Although Armstrong was the first man on the moon, there are, in fact almost no pictures of him there.

The videos shot in microgravity aboard the Tosok mothership were taken by Cletus Calhoun, and except for the occasional glimpse of one of his gangly limbs, he himself was therefore completely absent from the footage. Dale Rice was pleased by this. The more the jury forgot about Calhoun—the amiable hillbilly who could trade jokes with Jay Leno—the better.

Still, Clete’s drawling voice was heard loud and clear throughout the videotape. The tape began with him chatting with a floating Hask, who was plainly visible; Dale had forgotten just how blue Hask’s old hide had been.

“But you guys,” Clete was saying in that rich Tennessee accent, “being able to shut down for centuries, having that ability built right into y’all. You can fake gravity in space, ’course, through centrifugal force or constant acceleration. But there ain’t nothing you can do about the time it takes for interstellar travel. With a natural suspended-animation ability, y’all sure got us beat. We might have been destined to go into planetary orbit, but your race seems to have been destined to sail between the stars.”

“Many of our philosophers would agree with that statement,” remarked Hask. Then, after a second: “But not all, of course.” They were both quiet for a time. “I am hungry,” said Hask. “It will take several hours for the others to revive. Do you require food?”

“I brought some with me,” said Clete. “Navy rations. Hardly gourmet vittles, but they’ll do.”

“Come with me,” said Hask. The alien folded his three-part legs against a bulkhead and kicked off. Clete started off with a hand push—his long arm darted into the shot for a moment—but then apparently kicked off the wall as well. They floated down another corridor, large yellow lights overhead alternating with small orange ones.

Soon they came to a door, which slid aside for Hask. They floated into the room. As they did so more lights came on overhead.

There was a sound of Clete sucking in his breath. No way to know what he’d been thinking, but Dale Rice always felt like vomiting when he saw this part of the tape. In the dimmed light of the courtroom, he could see several jurors wincing.

There was a great bloody mass in the middle of the picture. It took several seconds for the shape of the thing to register as Clete panned the camera.

It seemed to be an enormously long tube of raw meat, its surface glistening with pinkish-red blood. The tube wound around itself like a pile of spilled intestines. Its diameter was about five inches, and its length—well, if it were all stretched out, instead of coiled up, it might have run to fifty feet, a great, gory anaconda stripped of its hide. One end was plugged into one of the room’s walls; the other end, which terminated in a flat circular cross section, was propped up by a Y-shaped ceramic support.

“God a’mighty!” said Clete voice. “What is it?”

“It is food,” said Hask.

“It’s meat?”

“Yes. Would you like some?”

“Ah—no. No, thanks.”

Hask floated over to the tube’s free end. He reached into one of the pouches on his dun-colored vest and removed a small blue cylinder about ten inches long and two inches in diameter. He took one end of it in the fingers of his front arm and the other in his back arm, then bent it. It split down the middle into two five-inch cylinders. He then moved his hands as if he were drawing an invisible loop of string stretched between the two cylinders around the great tube of meat, about four inches from its end. He pulled the two blue handles away from each other, and to the jury’s amazement, the last four inches of the great meat sausage separated from the rest. It just floated there, but the picture clearly showed a receptacle attached to the Y-shaped support that obviously would have caught it had the ship been undergoing acceleration.

“How did you do that?” said Clete, off camera.

Hask looked at him, puzzled. Then he seemed to realize. “You mean my carving tool? There is a single, long, flexible molecular chain connecting the two handles. The chain cannot be broken, but because of its thinness, it cuts easily through almost anything.”

Clete’s voice could be heard to say, “It slices! It dices!”

“Pardon?” said Hask.

“A line from an old TV commercial—for the Ronco Veg-O-Matic. ‘It slices! It dices!’ ” Clete sounded impressed. “Purty neat device. But if you can’t see the thread, isn’t it dangerous?”

Hask grabbed the two parts of the handle and pulled them as far apart as he could. Every fifteen inches or so, a large blue bead appeared along the otherwise invisible filament. “The beads enable you to see the filament,” said Hask, “as well as letting you handle it safely. They are lined on the inside with a monomolecular weave that the filament cannot cut through, so you can slide the beads along the filament if they get in the way.”

Hask’s tuft moved in a shrug. “It is a general-purpose tool, not just for carving meat; nothing sticks to the monofilament, so you do not have to worry about keeping it clean.”

Dale had his eyes glued to the jurors. First one got it, and then another, and soon they all had reacted with either widened eyes or noddings of their heads: they had just seen what could very likely have been the murder weapon.

Hask brought the two handles together—the molecular chain and its beads were reeled in as he did so—and he placed the unit back in a pocket. He then reached out with his front hand and plucked the floating disk of meat out of the air. Very little blood had been shed—a few circular drops had come free as the molecular chain went through the meat, but something—a vacuum cleaner, perhaps—had sucked them down into the Y-shaped support.

“What kind of critter is that?” said Clete. His arm was visible again, pointing at the skinless snake.

“It is not an animal,” said Hask. “It is meat.” The image bounced as Clete pushed off the wall to have a closer look at what Hask was holding. Clete apparently wasn’t good at maneuvering while weightless; Hask had to reach out with a leg—which bent in a way that would have snapped the joint had Hask been human—to stop Clete’s movement. Clete thanked Hask, then took a close-up shot of the piece of meat. It was clear now that it did have a skin, made up of diamond-shaped plates just like Hask’s own hide. But the skin on the meat was thin and crystal clear.

“Meat, but not an animal?” said Clete’s voice. He sounded perplexed.

“It is just meat,” Hask said. “It is not an animal. Rather, it is a product of genetic engineering. It has only what nervous system is required to support its circulatory system, and its circulatory system is simplicity itself. It is not alive; it feels no pain. It is simply a chemical factory, converting raw materials fed to it through the wall receptacle into edible flesh, balanced perfectly for our nutritional needs. Of course, it is not all we eat—we are omnivores, as you are.”

“Ah,” said Clete. “Y’all couldn’t bring animals on your long space voyage, but this lets y’all enjoy the taste.”

Hask’s front eyes blinked repeatedly. “We do not eat animals on our world,” he said. “At least, not anymore.”

“Oh,” said Clete. “Well, we don’t have the ability to create meat. We kill animals for their flesh.”

Hask’s tuft waggled as he considered this. “Since we do not have to kill for food, we no longer do so. Some say we have sacrificed too much—that killing one’s own food is a release, the outlet nature intended for violent urges.”

“Well, I’m an old country boy,” said Clete. “I’ve done my share o’ huntin’. But most people today, they get their meat prepackaged at a store. They don’t ever see the animal, and have no hand in the kill.”

“But you say you have killed?” said Hask.

“Well, yes.”

“What is it like—to kill for food?”

The camera bounced; Clete was apparently shrugging as he held it. “It can be very satisfying. Nothing quite so delicious as a meal you tracked and bagged yourself.”

“Intriguing,” said Hask. He looked at his disk of meat, as though it were somehow no longer all that appetizing. Still, he brought it to his front mouth, the outer horizontal and inner vertical openings forming a square hole. His rust-colored dental plates sliced a piece off the edge of the meat disk, and to the jury’s evident surprise, two long flat tongues popped out of the mouth after each bite, wiping what little blood there was from Hask’s face.

“You eat the meat raw?” said Clete.

Hask nodded. “In ancient times we cooked animal flesh, but the reasons for cooking—to soften the meat, and to kill germs—do not apply to this product. Raw meat is much more flavorful…”

“That’s fine,” said Linda Ziegler, rising in the darkness. The bailiff pushed the pause button, and a still image of the floating Tosok, holding the now half-eaten piece of raw flesh in his hand, jerked and flickered on the monitors. The lights in the courtroom were brought back to full illumination; jurors and audience members rubbed their eyes.

Linda Ziegler then introduced into evidence one of the Tosok monofilament tools—the one that had belonged to Hask. There was no way to demonstrate that it was the specific one that had been used in the murder; forensics had been unable to find any evidence of that, and so she didn’t bother pursuing this line of questioning.

Of course, Hask possessed a new monofilament tool now; the mothership had dozens in its stores. A smaller version of the Tosok meat factory had been installed at Paul Valcour Hall; Hask needed one of the tools in order to feed himself, and Dale had successfully argued that one accused of killing with a knife is normally not denied access to cutlery.

Still, there was no doubt that the shipboard videotape, and the presentation of Hask’s cutting tool in court, had a huge impact on the jury.

And so, with smug satisfaction, Linda Ziegler returned to her seat and said, “Your Honor, the People rest.”