Illegal Alien

*37*

Detective Lieutenant Jesus Perez came out of the elevator into the sixth-floor lounge at Valcour Hall, accompanied by five uniformed LAPD officers. Six Tosoks—Kelkad, Rendo, Torbat, Dodnaskak, Stant, and Ged—were seated in the lounge, watching a taped movie on the TV there.

“Which one of you is Kelkad?” said Perez.

The alien captain touched a control on his translator. “I am Kelkad.”

“Kelkad,” said Perez, “you are under arrest.”

Kelkad’s tuft flattened in disgust as he rose to his feet. “So this is human justice! Your case against Hask is failing, so now you are going to put me on trial?”

“You have the right to remain silent,” said Perez, reading from a card. “If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. If you desire an attorney and cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you without charge. Do you understand these rights as I’ve explained them to you?”

“This is an outrage!” said Kelkad.

“Do you understand these rights?”

“Yes, but—”

“Fine. Which of you is Rendo?”

“I am she.”

“Rendo, you are under arrest. You have the right to—”

“What are you going to do?” asked Kelkad. “Arrest all of us?”

“That is correct,” said Perez.

“But that is insane,” said Kelkad. “I have learned about your laws. You cannot arrest multiple suspects simultaneously for a crime that clearly only has one perpetrator. None of us were involved in the murder of Dr. Calhoun.”

“Who said anything about Dr. Calhoun?” said Perez. “You are being charged with conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Whose murder?” demanded Kelkad.

“Everyone’s murder,” said Perez.

“This is preposterous! We are your guests. We have done nothing wrong.”

“Once your fusion engine is repaired, you plan to turn a particle-beam weapon onto the Earth.”

Kelkad was silent for a moment. “Where did you get a wild idea like that?”

“You will have a chance to face your accuser during your trial.”

“But who could—” Kelkad clapped his front and back hands together at his right side. “Hask! Hask has told you this. What kind of system of justice is this? Hask is an accused murderer—he would say anything to deflect attention from himself.”

“Until now, you were insisting publicly that Hask is innocent.”

“Innocent? No, he is clearly a killer. Clearly insane. You heard the testimony—he is unbalanced by the standards of your people. I tell you now that he is unbalanced by the standards of mine as well.”

“Hask is the only decent Tosok I’ve met.” Perez paused. “Well, one of the two decent ones, anyway.”

Kelkad rotated his torso so that his eyes fell on each of his companions in turn. “So one of you is in league with Hask?” he said.

“Oh, it’s not one of them, Kelkad,” said Perez. “Michaelson, do you have that tape?”

“Right here, sir.”

“Play it.”

Michaelson moved toward the VCR, ejected the tape the Tosoks had been watching—Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—and inserted the one he’d brought with him.

“This was recorded about an hour ago,” Michaelson said, hitting play button.

It took a second for the picture to stabilize. When it did, it showed a view inside the Tosok mothership, obviously taken by a camera mounted on a Tosok’s torso; periodically a hand or part of a U-shaped foot was visible in the field of view. The Tosok was floating down a ship’s corridor? large yellow lighting disks—simulating the sunlight from Alpha Centauri A—alternating with smaller orange ones, simulating Centauri B’s rays.

The corridor ended at a square door, which slid aside. Standing next to Perez, Kelkad made a sound that was untranslated, but Perez assume it was shock at which door was being entered.

The image bounced around as the Tosok with the camera kicked of walls and the ceiling. The voice narrating the tape was the translator’s; it was almost impossible to hear the actual Tosok voice underneath. “All right,” it said, “I am at the main control unit for the particle-beam weapon. Now, give me a moment…” Hands reached into the picture, pulling a panel off of one the instrumentation banks. “There it is,” said the voice. “See that red unit in the center? That’s the circuitry controlled by Kelkad’s transmitter.”

The image bounced some more, and the red unit slid out of view as the Tosok jockeyed for position. “There are three lines going into it.”

A female human voice, crackling with static over a radio: “Just as I thought. Nothing complex—the designers obviously assumed Kelkad’s deadman switch wouldn’t ever be under attack from this end. Now, use the voltmeter I gave you—”

The human and the Tosok consulted for about ten minutes. Finally, the human said, “Okay, you’ll want to cut the blue one.”

The Tosok hesitated. “Of course,” said the translated voice, “there is a small chance that I will trigger the weapon when I interrupt the feed. I suppose some last words are in order, in case that happens.” A pause. “How about, ‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your neighbors’?”

Hands appeared in the picture again—this time, holding small tools—and the image bounced back to show the red unit. “Here we go…” One of the tools snipped what looked like a fiber-optic cable leading into the unit.

“The weapon did not discharge,” said the Tosok voice.

“The deadman switch should be deactivated now,” said the human voice.

In the sixth-floor lounge, Torbat said, “Hask will die for his treachery.” As if on cue, the recorded voice said, “As you humans would say, this is one for the history books, so I suppose I should get a decent shot of myself.” The image went dark as a hand reached toward the camera, and there was a clicking sound as it was disengaged from the suit. The view spun wildly as the camera was swung around, showing the Tosok—

“Seltar!” said Kelkad, the word sounding somewhat different when untranslated. “Kestadt pastalk ge-tongk!”

“If that’s ‘I thought you were dead!’ ” said Perez, with relish, “then you’ve got another think coming.”

“That should take care of everything,” said Seltar, on the tape. “You can go ahead and apprehend the others now.”

Michaelson moved in and clicked off the VCR. The TV came on in its place, showing Wheel of Fortune.

“Now,” said Perez. “Which of you is Dodnaskak?”

A front hand went up meekly.

“Dodnaskak, you have the right to remain silent—”

“Where is Hask?” said Kelkad.

“Don’t worry about that,” said Perez.

“He is here, no?”

“That’s not important,” said Perez. “I advise you again to say nothing until you’ve consulted with an attorney.”

“He is here,” said Kelkad. His breathing orifices were dilating. “I can smell him.”

“Stay where you are, Kelkad.” Perez gestured at one of the officers, who put a hand on his holster.

“Do not threaten me, human.”

“I can’t allow you to leave,” said Perez.

“We have submitted to enough of your primitive foolishness,” said Kelkad.

He began to walk backward, front eyes still on Perez.

“Stop, Kelkad!” shouted Perez. Michaelson removed his gun from his holster. A moment later the other four officers did the same thing. “Stop, or we’ll shoot!”

“You will not kill an ambassador,” said Kelkad, whose long strides had already taken him most of the way to the elevator.

“We are allowed to use force to subdue those resisting arrest,” said Perez.

Michaelson had his gun trained on Kelkad; the other four officers had theirs aimed at the remaining five Tosoks, who were standing perfectly still, except for their tufts, which were waving like wheat in a high wind.

“I know Hask is in this building,” said Kelkad, “and he is going to answer to me.”

“Don’t take another step,” said Perez.

Michaelson shifted his aim slightly, taking a bead on the controls for calling the elevator. He fired a single shot. The sound was loud, and a lick of flame emerged from the gun’s barrel. The elevator controls exploded in a shower of sparks.

“You’re next,” said Michaelson, reaiming at the alien captain.

“Very well,” said Kelkad. He stopped moving, and began reaching his front hand up toward the ceiling. His back hand, hidden by his torso, must have been rising, too, and when it cleared the top of his dome-shaped head, Perez suddenly realized that there was something shiny and white in its four-fingered grasp.

There was a flash of light in Kelkad’s palm, and a loud sound like sheet metal being warped. Michaelson was knocked backward against the wall.

Perez wheeled around. A neat hole, perhaps an inch wide, had been burned through the center of the man’s chest. His corpse was now slumping to the floor, leaving a long smear of blood on the wall behind him.

Four more quick flashes of light, four claps of aluminum thunder, and the remaining uniformed cops were all dead as well. “Do not make me kill you, too, Detective Perez,” said Kelkad. “Did you think that after the attack on Hask, I would walk around unarmed?”

Perez immediately bent down to pick up Michaelson’s gun, now lying on the floor. By the time he got it, Kelkad had already disappeared down the right-hand wing of the building. Perez crabbed sideways, keeping the gun trained on the remaining five Tosoks, who seemed to be unarmed. He picked up a second officer’s gun. But another one of the guns had ended up quite near one of the other Tosoks. Perez couldn’t get at it without exposing himself to physical assault, and he couldn’t run off after Kelkad without the other Tosoks grabbing it, as well as the remaining two revolvers. Perez tucked one gun into his pants’ waist and, keeping the other one aimed at the Tosoks, used his left hand to get his cellular phone out of his jacket pocket to call for reinforcements.

Hask was in his dorm room on the second floor of Valcour Hall, clearing out his personal belongings. What with the other six Tosoks being taken away to jail, there was little point in him continuing to reside in this giant residence, which, after all, USC did have other uses for.

It was bad enough being a traitor to his own people, and knowing that he would never see the stars of home again, but at least his few possessions would help him remember his old life. Hask picked up the lostartd disk that had decorated his dorm room. The crack in it where the two halves had been joined together was only visible if he held the disk obliquely to the light. He carefully packed it in the suitcase Frank had given him, wrapping it in two of his tunics for protection.

Suddenly the sound of a gunshot split the air. It had come from upstairs.

Hask felt all four of his hearts pounding out of synchronization—the sound reminded him of the shot that had dug into his own chest on the lawn outside this very building. Moments later he heard the sound of five Tosok blaster discharges. By the absent God—one of them must have brought a blaster along on the journey! Hask hadn’t thought any handheld weapons had been among the mothership’s supplies; no direct contact, after all, had ever been intended with aliens.

The sounds fell into place in his mind—the other Tosoks were resisting arrest. Another sound, faint and distant, came to his sensitive ears—the echoing slaps of Tosok feet on concrete. One of the Tosoks was coming down the stairs.

There had been five blaster discharges—presumably five humans now lay dead. And the Tosok with the blaster might very well be coming to get him.

Valcour Hall was large. If Kelkad—who but the captain would have brought a hand weapon on the journey?—had been up in the sixth-floor lounge, he’d have to come down four flights of stairs. The sound was clearly coming from the stairwell at the end of the other wing; that meant he’d also have to run the length of both wings to reach Hask’s room, which was at the opposite end of the building.

Hask thought about making his own escape, smashing his dorm-room window and jumping to the ground below. Earth’s gravity was less than that of the home world; it was a significant fall, but probably one that he could survive. Hask would then have to try to escape by running across the campus. But the blaster had a range of several hundred meters—Kelkad could probably pick him off with ease. No—no, he would make his stand here.

Hask understood much of human law now: he was about to be attacked with a high-energy weapon and he honestly believed his life was in danger.

He was entitled to respond with deadly force.

If only he had a weapon of his own…

Captain Kelkad rounded one stairwell and then another. He almost lost his balance several times; human steps weren’t deep enough for him, and the hand railings were unusable. But he continued down, passing landing after landing, until he’d reached the second floor. He leaned his front arm against the horizontal bar that operated the door mechanism, clicking the locking bolt aside. He then took a step back and swung the door open, while remaining shielded behind it. He peered around it: no sign of Hask, or anyone else. He paused for a moment. His breathing orifices were spasming, gulping air—but they were also gulping aromas. He could smell Hask’s pheromones wafting this way; Hask must be in his room at the far end of this floor. A fitting place for the traitor to die.

It had taken a minute to get ready, but Hask was prepared now. He could hear the pounding of Kelkad’s feet coming down the perpendicular corridor.

Hask looked out his door, down his own stretch of hallway. Ten meters away was one of the glass-and-metal doorways that normally served to muffle sounds; when Valcour Hall was eventually filled with students, anything that helped keep sound down would be welcome. That doorway had been left open for most of the time the Tosoks had been using the facility; a wooden wedge was jammed underneath the door to keep it open.

Kelkad surely knew that Hask had no handgun; judging by the sound, Kelkad was running down the adjoining corridor at top speed. But Hask knew his captain well: Kelkad wouldn’t open fire at once. First he would want to confront Hask, cursing him as a traitor—

Suddenly Kelkad appeared in the lobby between the two wings. Hask ducked mostly behind the wall of his room, only his head sneaking out of the doorway to watch. Kelkad lost some speed as he changed directions, but soon was charging down the corridor, knowing that he didn’t have much time, knowing that more human police officers were doubtless rushing to the campus.

“Hask,” screamed Kelkad. One advantage of having separate channels for the mouths and the respiratory system was that he could still speak clearly while gulping for breath. “You treasonous distalb! You complete—”

And then he hit the open doorway in the middle of the hall—

And suddenly the words stopped.

Kelkad’s momentum—all that angry inertia, all that speed, all his mass—carried him through the doorway.

He continued on, mostly as a single unit, for a meter or so past the threshold, and then he began to topple—and pieces of him began to fall this way and that, like a child’s creation made out of blocks—cubic hunks of flesh and bone and muscle, their newly exposed faces slick with pink Tosok blood, tumbling to the floor, some bouncing as they hit—

Hask came out of his room and moved toward the carved up blocks, each about a foot on a side, that had once been his captain. Some parts were twitching, but most lay completely still.

Of course, there wasn’t much blood; the valves in the arteries and veins still worked, even in death.

Hask reached up with his back hand to his own tuft, feeling it as it waved in relief. He looked at the door frame, and at the carving tool stuck to it with Krazy Glue on the left side of the jamb about four feet off the floor.

Also visible were twelve of the blue beads glued to the side of the jamb, and to the lintel, and to the metal piece across the bottom of the doorway.

What he could not see was the monofilament itself, stretched out in a grid of horizontal and vertical lines across the opening.

The words of his dear departed friend Cletus Calhoun came back to Hask.

“It slices!” Clete had said. “It dices!”

Indeed it did.

Hask looked down at his own front hand. One of his fingers had been severed; he’d been in such a hurry setting up his trap that the digit had gotten in the way of the monofilament. But it would grow back in time.

New noises came to Hask’s ears: the sound of approaching sirens. Soon, the police would be here.

For this crime, at least, Hask knew he’d get off.