Robert Sawyer - Illegal Alien

Hask’s tuft waved in confusion. “I hardly see the point of that.”

“Humor me,” said Dale.

“There is no reason to—”

“I think there is,” said Dale. “Please.”

Hask made a very human-sounding sigh. “Very well.”

“Thank you,” said Dale, standing up in the small dorm room. He hooked his thumbs into his suspenders and turned to face a nonexistent jury. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’d like to thank you for your attention during this very difficult trial. It’s been a case like no other, with issues that range far beyond this courthouse—” He paused, interrupting himself. “That’s where Linda would jump up and object,” he said, smiling. “Can’t urge the jury to take anything into account other than the facts of the case, as presented during the trial.” He switched back into courtroom mode. “Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, let us review the evidence.

“We’ve heard from Captain Kelkad that his crew originally consisted of eight Tosoks, including himself. We heard, too, that one of those Tosoks, named Seltar, died during the flight to Earth, and the defendant, Hask, performed a harvesting of her organs, which was the normal, proper procedure should someone die during the mission.

“Now, the People would have you believe that this unforeseen event—the need to carve up a corpse—turned out to be unexpectedly titillating to Hask, so much so that he found himself overcome by an irresistible urge to have a similar experience again. And, when the opportunity presented itself, according to the People, Hask did indeed repeat the experience, killing and brutally dissecting the body of Cletus Robert Calhoun.

“We also heard that Tosok blood was found at the crime scene—but no evidence has been presented conclusively linking that blood to Hask. Also at the scene was a bloody mark that might be a Tosok footprint, but, again, the People utterly failed to demonstrate that this footprint belonged to Hask.

“Now, it is true that my client did indeed shed his skin at approximately the same time that Cletus Calhoun was killed. The People have stressed this fact, suggesting that Hask induced this shedding because he had ended up covered in Dr. Calhoun’s blood.

“Apparently corroborating that the shedding was induced was the testimony of Stant, another Tosok—who turned out to be Hask’s half brother. And it was revealed that, as was required by the peculiarities of Tosok biology, Hask and Stant must have been born within days of each other, and that their shedding schedules should have been closely synchronized. But, as we all saw in this courtroom”—Dale winked here, acknowledging to Hask and Frank that he wasn’t completely caught up in this fantasy closing argument—“Stant himself shed his skin without any apparent inducement some five months after Hask did.

“Now, as this trial progressed a horrible thing happened. A deranged human being shot the defendant. Judge Pringle will doubtless instruct you, quite rightly, that your verdict should not be influenced one way or the other by this event per se . That one individual saw fit to shoot Hask does not make him guilty. Neither, of course, should sympathy over his wound lead you to find him innocent. Indeed, you should probably ignore the incident altogether.

“But one person who could not ignore it was Dr. Carla Hernandez, the human surgeon who aided the Tosok named Stant in removing the bullet from Hask. Dr. Hernandez helped prepare Hask’s body for surgery, and in so doing, she saw on his body what she clearly recognized as scar tissue—scar tissue left behind by previous incisions.

“We’ve heard much about the Tosok powers of recuperation, of course. Why, we’ve even heard testimony that they can regenerate not just damaged limbs, but damaged organs as well. So, it goes without saying that any prominent, fresh-looking scars on Hask’s body must be of quite recent origin—given enough time, they would have disappeared completely.

“But what would have caused such scars? The answer, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is obvious—they were caused by the surgical removal of organs from Hask’s own body.

“When Dr. Nobilio and Captain Kelkad returned to the Tosok mothership, they confirmed what I’d come to suspect myself: that several organs one would have expected Hask to have harvested from Seltar’s body were also missing.

“Now, is Hask some sort of interstellar monster, so hungry for body parts that not only did he devour some of his dead colleague’s ones, and some of Dr. Calhoun’s, but that he also went so far as to remove some of his own organs for that purpose?” Dale paused, looking first at Frank, then at Hask.

“Of course not. What a ridiculous notion! After all, that arm in his back might give Hask certain advantages at manual tasks over humans, but surely those advantages don’t extend to performing surgery on himself.

“And that , ladies and gentlemen, means that the surgical scars on Hask’s own body were inflicted by somebody else. Now, who could that have been? Surely if it were a human being, Hask would simply tell us who it was—what an irony that would have been for our UFO-nut friends! Aliens come to Earth, and humans take out their organs, instead of the other way around! But that is not what happened here. No, clearly Hask was operated on by another Tosok—the fact that the incisions were closed with something other than suture proves that. But why? And which of the remaining six members of the starship’s crew did it?

“Well, of course, we’ve seen that Stant is also highly skilled in surgical matters—it was he, after all, who removed the bullet from Hask at the LAC-USC Medical Center. And indeed Stant invoked the Fifth Amendment over the question of whether an individual Tosok’s blood could be identified by chemical analysis.”

Dale lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Linda would object strongly here, too—I’m really not allowed to touch on the motive of a witness for taking the Fifth.” He hooked his thumbs in his suspenders again, readopting his courtroom persona. “The obvious initial conclusion, of course, is that Stant believed his own half brother, Hask, to be guilty, but knew that, as close relatives, their blood types would be similar, and that any blood evidence that tended to convict Hask would also serve as evidence against Stant.

“A more direct interpretation is that the Tosok blood found at the crime scene was Stant’s own—which, of course, is why he wouldn’t want to testify that it could be identified as such. But I favor the first interpretation, that Stant feels Hask is guilty, but knew the blood evidence could as easily point to Stant himself as to Hask. Yes, I’m sure Stant believes Hask did it—but, ladies and gentlemen, I myself do not believe this.

“I do not believe that Hask killed Cletus Calhoun, and I do not believe that the shedding of his skin was induced. Rather, I believe Hask shed his skin at precisely the natural time for it to be shed. It happened five months prior to his half brother’s shedding because Hask was out of hibernation not for the few days that dealing with the impact in our solar system’s Kuiper belt would have required—but rather because he was out of hibernation for almost half a year!”

Frank Nobilio sat up straight in his chair. “God!”

“And why,” continued Dale, “would he have stayed out of hibernation so much longer than he had claimed? The answer is simple: so that organs surgically removed from his body could regenerate internally.

“We have heard, ladies and gentlemen, that a Tosok can live for extended periods with only two hearts, instead of four, and only two lungs, instead of four—and the scars Dr. Hernandez noticed on Hask’s left side indicate that his original two left hearts and his two left lungs had indeed been surgically removed, along with his left-side gebarda organs.