Illegal Alien

*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?”

“Are you asking for asylum?” asked Frank.

“No. But if I am to answer Dale’s question, it cannot be done here. We must go somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Northern Canada.”

“Why?”

“Arrange the passage. I will take you and Dale there, and then, I promise, we shall return to Los Angeles, and I will face justice.”

Dale sent Michiko Katayama to court the next day, to beg off, saying that Hask had suffered a relapse from his gunshot injury. Frank arranged for Hask to be smuggled out of the USC residence in a laundry container, which was driven to March Air Force Base, nine miles southeast of Riverside. From there, a U.S. military jet flew Frank, Dale, and Hask to a Canadian Forces Base in Cold Lake, Alberta. They transferred to a Canadian plane, which took them into the Northwest Territories.

Frank didn’t particularly like to fly, especially in small planes. He kept his equilibrium by thinking about his daughter, Maria, conjuring up her beautiful, wide-eyed, twelve-year-old face. So much had happened—and, it seemed, so much more was still going to happen. All his life, he’d been trying to make the world a better place, but never for himself. It had always been for her, for the children, for the future. What effect would the outcome of this trial have on humanity’s relations with the Tosoks? What kind of world would be left for Maria once the verdict was handed down? He shivered in the plane’s small cabin, and not just from the cold.

The Canadian pilot almost missed the ship. Hask’s lander had amply demonstrated its ability to change color by cycling through red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet while bobbing on the Atlantic. This lander, too, had changed color, to precisely match the lichen-covered rocks of the tundra. But once Hask had pointed it out, its shield shape was obvious. The plane had pontoons; the Canadian pilot put it down in a lake about a quarter mile from the alien craft. Finding a parka big enough to accommodate Dale had been a challenge, but they’d managed it. Hask was actually wearing a Tosok space suit, brought from one of the Tosok landing craft at USC. It was pale green in color and hugged his form snugly—but, he said, provided more than enough insulation to keep out the subzero cold.

They made their way ashore in an inflatable rubber boat and walked the short distance across the barren landscape to the lander, their breath escaping in clouds of condensation. A radio in his space suit allowed Hask to communicate with the lander’s occupant; when they arrived, the outer airlock door opened for them.

They cycled through the air lock—and there she was.

Seltar.

Her hide was purplish gray, and her eyes were pink and orange and ebony and navy blue. She was slightly shorter and slightly broader than Hask.

Hask touched controls on his space suit and it fell away, like a shed skin.

He rushed to Seltar. His front arm came up, as did hers, and they intertwined their eight fingers. Meanwhile his back hand came up and reached over his head to touch Seltar’s tuft; Seltar, meanwhile reached over with her back hand to stroke Hask’s tuft.

“God, it has been so long—” said Hask. He realized his translator was still on, and disengaged his front hand from Seltar’s long enough to deactivate it. They continued to embrace, and to chatter to each other for several minutes. Frank looked at Dale, slightly embarrassed.

At last the embrace ended, and Hask turned to look at the two humans. He was still holding front hands with Seltar, but he reactivated his translator with his back hand.

“Forgive us,” said Hask. “Did I mention that Seltar is my mate?”

Frank grinned. “No, you didn’t.”

“Well, she is. In fact, she is my four-mate—we have agreed, when the time comes, that I shall impregnate all four of her wombs.”

“You kinky devil,” said Dale, with a smile.

When Hask had spoken all those months ago of the female Tosok God, Frank thought he’d heard Hask call her the “foremother” of the race, a feminine version of “forefather.” He realized now that what Hask had probably really said, though, was “four-mother.”

“Please,” said Hask, “let me make proper introductions. Seltar, this is Dale Rice, a human attorney. And this is Frank Nobilio, a human scientist and government official. They are good people, and they are my friends.”

“How do you do, Seltar?” said Frank.

Her translated voice was identical to Hask’s—presumably Hask had simply copied the translation program from his portable computer to hers. “I do very well, thank you,” she said.

“You’ve been here all this time?” asked Dale.

“Yes,” she said.

“But why here? Isn’t it too cold for you?”

“My space suit provides adequate protection when I feel the urge to get outside of this lander,” said Seltar, “but when I do go outside, the light is agreeably dim. The sun does not get far above the horizon this far north.”

“Amazing,” said Dale. “And the others all think you’re dead?”

“They do,” said Seltar. “And we must keep it that way.”

“Why?”

“I am your only hope.”

“To clear Hask, you mean?”

Her tuft split in the now familiar Tosok shrug. “Your language lacks sufficient pronouns. I am your only hope. I am the only hope of you.”

“Pardon?”

Hask stepped forward. “As Cletus might have put it, ‘I am the only hope of y’all.’ She means she is the last hope of the human race.”

“What?” Frank felt his eyebrows climbing.

“The things we shall tell you must remain secret,” said Seltar. “You cannot divulge them to anyone without my permission.”

“We promise not to say anything,” said Dale.

Hask turned to Seltar. “He is speaking the truth.”

“Then tell them,” said Seltar.

Hask turned back to the humans. “Seltar and I belong to what you might call a different religion than the other six Tosoks, although perhaps a different philosophical school would be a better description.” He looked at Frank, then at Dale. “The crossbreeding that is the norm among Tosoks—four males and one female involved in most unions—has led to a substantial degree of interrelation among the Tosok people. The result is that we tend to think of the survival of our race as more important than the survival of any one individual. The school Seltar and I belong to abjures that; we have seen the damage it can do. That is why we are mating exclusively with each other.”

“I don’t understand,” said Frank. “Surely such interrelation would have all kinds of benefits. I bet you have fewer wars than we do.”

“We in fact have no wars,” said Hask. “I was amazed to learn of the human propensity for them. But on the question of interrelation, as in all questions, one side always has more power, and in this one, the negative aspects of protecting the species at all costs are greater than the benefit.”

He paused, as if thinking about how to express himself. “Dale, during this case we encountered at least one juror who would say and do anything to get accepted, presumably in order to ensure a particular outcome. Well, Seltar and I did everything we could to get appointed to one of the star missions.” His two front eyes blinked. “The tragedy is that several missions did get away without any of us among the crew.”

Dale sounded confused. “What are you talking about?”

“What do you think the purpose of the Tosok expedition to your solar system is?” asked Hask.

“Exploration, no?” said Dale. “To see what was here?”

“No. The purpose of the mission was survival—survival of the Tosok race.”

Frank nodded, his worst fears confirmed. “So you did come to invade Earth.”

“Invade?” Hask’s tuft waved backward. “No. We certainly would not want to live here. Your sun is so bright and large, your air smells, and all those annoying insects! No, no, the Tosoks are quite content with our home.”

“Then what did you mean by saying your mission is survival?”

“We come from a world currently orbiting Alpha Centauri A at a distance much greater than your world orbits your sun. In fact, we orbit so far out from Centauri A that we are just on the outermost edge of orbital stability—any farther out, and the gravitational effects of Centauri B would be significant.”

“So your planet is at risk,” said Frank.

“At risk? No, not at all.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“There is a third star in our system—Centauri C. Centauri C orbits the center of mass of the A-B system in a hugely eccentric path. Approximately every four hundred thousand Earth years it passes very close to us. When it last approached us, Centauri A was positioned between Centauri C and the center of mass of the A-B system; when it next approaches us, Centauri B will be between C and the center of mass. Indeed, since the orbital period of C is a precise multiple of the A-B orbital period, there is a perfect alternation: on one pass, A will be between C and the center of mass; on the next pass, B will be between C and the center of mass, and so on.”

“So?” said Frank.

“So mass curves space, of course, and at each near passage of C, that curvature becomes sufficient that my home world slips from orbiting around A to orbiting around B, or vice versa. We call this transfer ‘the handoff.’ Of course, there is a period of instability during the handoff. Still, when orbiting A, we ultimately settle in at a comfortably warm two AUs or so from that star. But when orbiting B, although we also settle into an orbit not much greater than two AUs from B, things are much colder, for B is a much fainter star. Our climate is temperate when we orbit A, but when we orbit B, our surface temperature drops to”—he paused, and worked controls on his pocket computer—“almost fifty degrees below zero Celsius.”

“My God!” said Frank. “That’s below the freezing point for carbon dioxide. It must kill everything.”

“It does not. Those lifeforms that have persisted on our world have developed a natural ability to hibernate during these times. Everything simply pauses for four hundred thousand years, until Proxima swings by again, causing a reverse handoff, bringing us back into orbit around Alpha Centauri A. Temperatures rise, the long sleep ends, and we continue on.”

“That’s incredible,” said Dale. “I mean, wouldn’t it require enormous luck for a world to exist in a stable configuration like that?”

“Incredible? No. Unlikely perhaps, but, then again, no more unlikely than the coincidences of sizes and orbits that makes possible the kind of perfect total solar eclipse we observed from Earth’s surface. Of all the inhabited planets in the entire universe, Earth may be the only one that enjoys such a spectacle.”

“I suppose,” said Dale, “but—”

“And, of course, there usually are such harmonics to orbital mechanics. Orbits of bodies around each other are often in perfect ratios: two-to-three, one-to-two, and so on. Your innermost planet, Mercury, for instance, revolves round your sun exactly two times for every three times that Mercury rotates around its own axis; its day is precisely two-thirds the length of its year.” Hask’s tuft split in the center. “No, our configuration may be as unique as the perfectly eclipsing combination of your Earth, your giant moon, and your sun, but it is possible, and although it may not always have been this way, nor may it always be this way, it has indeed been stable for millions of years.”

“Doesn’t the handoff cause a lot of earthquakes?” asked Dale.

“The Tosok home world has no moon,” said Hask. “It probably did once, or else our world would have an even greater greenhouse effect than it does now; Clete told me that without the moon, Earth’s atmosphere would resemble Venus’s—a thick blanket covering the world. Our old moon’s gravity doubtless skimmed off some of our original atmosphere, but that moon must have been lost during one of the handoffs. Anyway, without your own moon churning up Earth’s interior through its tidal effects, you would not have any plate tectonics; Earth is, after all, unique among the planets in your solar system in having such things. Without crustal plates, you do not get earthquakes; they are unknown on our world. Except for the impact on our climate, the handoffs proceed quite smoothly.”

“But if handoffs occur only every four hundred thousand years,” said Frank, “your race can’t have known one yet. I mean, you guys are advanced beyond us, but by hundreds of years, not by hundreds of centuries.”

“True,” said Hask. He paused. “Our fossil record is scantier in many ways than is yours. But since we have no plate tectonics, no portion of our crust is ever subducted and destroyed through the passage of time; although there are fewer fossils, our record is contiguous in a way that yours is not. We were astounded when our geologists found proof in core samples of the huge periodic temperature changes our world had undergone for at least many tens of millions of your years. But although the fossil record shows that a few species die out at each great freezing, most simply continue on immediately after the thaw. Life on our world has evolved to deal with the handoffs—or, more precisely, only those lifeforms that had an ability to survive freezing survived the first handoff, and all current lifeforms are descended from them.” He paused. “Perhaps it is not coincidental that our hearts are primitive compared to yours; I understand many earthly fish and amphibians—creatures with similar hearts—can also survive periods of freezing.”

“That’s why there was no hibernation equipment aboard your ship,” said Dale.

“Exactly. Simple cold temperatures are enough to induce hibernation. The two centuries of sleep required for the journey from our planet to here were insignificant; we could as easily have gone many hundreds of thousands of years.”

“All of that is fine,” said Frank, “but then what did you mean when you said your starflight was about survival?”

Hask’s tuft danced in agitation. It was a moment before he replied. “Our race sent starships to all the worlds neighboring ours to see if there was any life there. Actually, although Sol is our closest neighbor, we dispatched much faster ships to several more-distant stars, including the ones you call Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani, from whom we had already detected radio signals. As you may have noticed, we make much less use of metal than you do; again, the lack of lunar churning has kept most of our world’s metals deep beneath the crust. We simply did not have the resources to send equally sophisticated ships to all possible destinations. When we left Alpha Centauri, two hundred of your years ago, you had not yet begun to broadcast by radio, of course, and so you were not a high-priority target.

“Still, we were not just looking for intelligent life, you understand, but also for potentially intelligent life. Four hundred thousand years ago, after all, your own species did not exist—but its forebears did. These missions were sent to ascertain if any intelligent life was present now on neighboring worlds, or if any might arise by the time the next long sleep was over. For eons, life on our world has passed peacefully through the periodic sleeps—after all, the entire ecosystem shuts down during them, so we have no fear of indigenous predators. But what about predators from the stars? What about hostile worlds bent on conquest? No aliens had yet visited our world, so we assumed we were the most advanced form of life in the local universe. But if we were to stop evolving for four hundred thousand years, who knows what now primitive lifeforms from other worlds would—what was the word you used, Frank?—would leapfrog past us during that time? Who knows what threat they might pose to us when we reawaken? Who knows if they would even allow us to reawaken, or would kill us all while we slept?”

“God,” said Dale. “You came here to wipe out all the life on Earth.”

“Not all the life, Dale—I doubt we could do that, anyway. But we certainly intended to wipe out all the vertebrates, just to be on the safe side.”

Frank felt his jaw go slack. All the vertebrates. Jesus Christ. It was so big, so massive—and then, all of a sudden, it had a human face. Maria. They would kill her, along with everything else. “That’s—that’s monstrous,” said Frank, his voice quaking with rage. “That’s downright evil. What gives you the right to go around the galaxy, wiping out whole planets?”

“A very good question,” said Hask. He looked at Seltar, then continued. “We used to think we were the divinely created children of God—and that, of course, would be sufficient to give us the right to do whatever we deemed necessary; if God did not want us to do it, after all, she would thwart our attempt. But when we discovered that that is not true, that we are merely products of evolution, well, then, the question of having the right to do something no longer enters into it. Survival of the fittest, no? The struggle for life, no? Competition, no? If we can advantage our species, then we have the right and the obligation to do so.”

“Jesus,” said Dale.

“I agree,” said Hask.

“Pardon?”

“Do I misunderstand you? When you invoke the name of your putative savior in that tone of voice, you are expressing disgust, no?”

“Well—yes.”

“Then we do agree. I share your disgust, and so does Seltar. But we are a tiny minority. Our hope was that once the others met you, they would realize that it would be inappropriate to wipe your planet clean of life. But they have not wavered in their plan. Indeed, if it had not been for the accident in your Kuiper belt, they would have already completed that task: our mothership is equipped with a high-powered wide-angle particle-beam weapon, which we would have trained on your world from orbit. In short order, we would have irradiated the entire surface of your planet. Indeed, the other Tosoks still intend to do that, once the repairs are complete.”

Dale’s deep voice: “Do the other Tosoks know that you’re a… a…”

“A traitor?” Hask lifted his front and back shoulders, an acquired human gesture. “Do not hesitate to say it; I am comfortable with the term. No, they do not. We had two possible hopes. The first was to prove that your race was divinely created—if we could show that you were the true children of God, our people would never have harmed you. But your form is as imperfect as ours.”

“And the other hope?”

“Seltar. If the mothership was repaired, and the attack on Earth imminent, then Seltar would sabotage the ship—something she could only do if no one suspected her existence. The eight of us would have been marooned here, but that would be—what is your metaphor?—a small price to pay.”

“If you woke up first, why not just disable the ship then?” asked Dale.

“I do wish to return home, counselor.”

“You could have killed the other Tosoks in their sleep,” said Frank.

“God did not move me to do that; despite what happened to Clete, I am no murderer.”

Frank’s voice was hard. “And what, precisely, did happen to Clete?”

“He discovered that Seltar was still alive. I had been careless. While the others were off at the lecture by that paleontologist, I took the opportunity to contact Seltar by radio; I missed her so much, I could not bear not to speak with her. Although my translator was off, Clete overheard me—I had not realized that he, too, had demurred from attending the lecture to work on his script, and he had the habit of pacing the halls as he thought of what he wanted to write. Clete realized that I was speaking to a Tosok other than the ones at the lecture—and doing so in realtime. I chased him back to his quarters and tried to explain to him the necessity of keeping the secret. He said he would not tell anyone—but I could tell he was lying; his face had grown brighter.”

“What?” said Dale.

“His face grew brighter—all your faces do that when you lie; I noted the correlation within days of arriving on Earth.”

“You mean you saw him blush?” asked Dale.

“No—blush is to change color, is it not? No, I said brighten.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Frank. “We suspected you guys could see into the infrared, but…”

“What?” said Dale.

Frank looked at the lawyer. “He sees infrared—he sees heat. Even if a person isn’t visibly blushing, capillaries do dilate in the cheeks, causing the cheeks to warm. Hask here is a walking lie detector.”

“As you say,” said Hask. “I had no doubt of Clete’s intentions. The moment I left, he was going to rush off to the lecture hall to tell you, Dr. Nobilio. I could not allow that—I could not risk that you, or someone you would tell, would reveal the information to Kelkad and the others. Remember, the other Tosoks all knew when you were lying, too.” He paused. “I— I just wanted to restrain Clete long enough to bring him proof of what the other Tosoks were going to do, in hopes that he would make a sincere promise of silence… so I encircled his leg with the monofilament. I told him that if he struggled at all it would cut through him, but… but he did struggle.” Hask paused, and his tuft waved in sadness. “I am so sorry. I meant only to detain him. But he kept bleeding and bleeding. I have never seen so much blood in my life.”

“So, with him dead, you decided to dissect the body,” said Frank.

“Yes. Do you not see? I was looking for proof of perfection in its design. I wanted so much to find proof of that—it would have saved your race. But instead I found design flaw after design flaw. I could not dispose of the corpse, but I did manage to steal at least some of the most egregiously obvious evidence of evolution rather than inspired design. The bad design of the throat was obvious at a glance, especially since I had already seen you choke on some water, Frank. The eye was harder—but my pocket computer allowed me to do a decent scan of its structure. And as I traced your digestive system—messy thing that it is—I found that closed tube that seemed to do nothing at all. By wrapping them up and tossing them in the trash, I had hoped to delay the others discovering that your race is not divine.”

“But why didn’t you just come forward and tell the world the truth?” asked Dale. “For God’s sake, you were interviewed by Barbara Walters. You could have simply said, while the cameras were rolling, that your people have come to destroy us. Then we would have apprehended all the other Tosoks. End of problem.”

“Counselor,” said Hask, “surely you do not think all of us would have come down to Earth’s surface without some way to control and operate our mothership remotely? Yes, our main engine is damaged, but the fusion reactor still functions, and the particle-beam weapon is in working order. Kelkad has surgically implanted in his person a device that can activate the weapon from the ground. True, using it while he is still on the surface would kill him and the rest of the Tosoks, but he would view that as proper fulfillment of his destiny, and it would accomplish the primary mission: sterilizing the surface of your planet. If any attempt is made to arrest him, I have no doubt that Kelkad will trigger the weapon.”

“Well, then,” said Dale, “our military could simply shoot Kelkad dead.”

“The same device monitors his vital signs. If he dies, the weapon will be fired automatically.”

“Christ,” said Frank.

“Exactly.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“I am not sure,” said Hask. “But there is much more to this court case than simply my fate. The fate of your world hangs in the balance.”

“What if the particle-beam device were disabled?” asked Frank.

“Neither Seltar nor I have the expertise to do that; it had automatically locked onto your world from the moment we entered your solar system, and we were terrified that if we meddled with its workings, we would accidentally activate it.”

“You may not have the expertise,” said Frank, “but my government’s military has many people in its employ who specialize in high-tech weaponry—and most of them haven’t had much to do these last few years.