Robert Sawyer: Illegal Alien

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.

There was still the matter of The People of the State of California v. Hask .

After the arrest of the other Tosoks, Hask and Seltar had gone public with their story, and Hask retook the witness stand to tell it all. There was no doubt now that he had indeed killed Cletus Calhoun—Dale had been wrong in assuming Seltar had been directly involved.

Linda Ziegler made her closing argument, Dale followed with a passionate plea for leniency in his summation and argument, then—as California law allowed—Ziegler got the final word, presenting a summation that reminded the jurors that Cletus Calhoun was dead, and regardless of everything else, someone had to answer for that crime.

Finally, Judge Pringle took the jury through CALJIC: the California Jury Instructions—Criminal. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” she began, “you have heard all the arguments of the attorneys, and now it is my duty to instruct you on the law as it applies to this case. You will have these instructions in written form in the jury room to refer to during your deliberations. You must base your decision on the facts and the law.

“You have two duties to perform. First, you must determine the facts from the evidence received in the trial and not from any other sources. A ‘fact’ is something proved directly or circumstantially by the evidence or by stipulation. A stipulation is an agreement between attorneys regarding the facts.

“Second, you must apply the law as I state it to you to the facts, as you determine them, and in this way arrive at your verdict.

“Note this well: you must accept and follow the law as I state it to you, whether or not you agree with the law. If anything concerning the law said by the attorneys in their arguments or at any other time during the trial conflicts with my explanation of the law, you must follow my directions…”

The jury instructions took most of the afternoon, but finally they came to an end.

“You shall now retire,” said Drucilla Pringle, her voice noticeably hoarse by this point, “and select one of your number to act as foreperson. He or she will preside over your deliberations. In order to reach verdicts, all twelve jurors must agree to the decision. As soon as all of you have agreed upon the verdicts, so that when polled, each may state truthfully that the verdicts express his or her vote, have the forms dated and signed by your foreperson and then return with them to this courtroom.”

“What if the jury brings in a conviction?” asked Dale. He and Frank had returned to Dale’s office; there was no telling how many hours or days the jury would spend deliberating. Hask was off spending what might be his final few hours of freedom with Seltar.

“Then we appeal, no?” said Frank.

Dale sighed. “Everyone says that. But, you know, we can’t appeal a jury verdict per se . They’re not subject to any kind of review. You can only get an appeal if the judge has made a mistake. In this kind of case, it has to be a mistake in law. If Pringle sustained objections she should have overruled, if she disallowed evidence she should have allowed, or if her instructions to the jury were flawed, then we can get an appeal hearing—but that’s no guarantee that the verdict will be overturned.”

“Oh,” said Frank. “You always hear about appeals. I thought we automatically got another shot.”

“No. Which is why I asked the question: what do we do if the verdict is guilty?”

“I don’t know,” said Frank. “Any ideas?”

“Yes. Have a word with your boss.”