Illegal Alien Page 5

  One of the highlights of the trip—for Tosoks and humans alike—was observing one of the true wonders of nature. Clete tried to set the stage for it appropriately.

  “Even now that I’ve actually been in space,” he said to the Tosoks, “the most incredible astronomical sight I’ve ever seen I saw from the ground.” He paused. “A total solar eclipse. There’s nothing like it. And we’re goin’ to get to see one. I wish I could say we planned this for you guys, but we’re jes’ plain lucky. It’s almost two years afore the next one. But this one—well, this one will be visible in lots of highly populated areas. I had to go to the Galápagos for the one in ’98 and to Siberia for the one in ’97—but it don’t matter; wherever they are, I go. This one, though, will be visible from here in northern France all the way to Turkey—prolly be seen by more people than any eclipse in human history.” A pause. “Does your world have a moon, Kelkad?”

  The alien captain’s head tuft moved backward in what was now recognized as the Tosok sign of negation. “No. We were surprised to see how big yours is.”

  “Sure ’nuff,” said Clete. “’Fact, Earth and its moon come purty near to bein’ a double planet.”

  “It is remarkable,” agreed Kelkad. “But even though we have no moon, I do know what an eclipse is—the partial or complete obscuring of one celestial body by another.”

  “That’s true—but our eclipses are somethin’ special,” said Clete. “See, our sun is four hundred times wider than our moon—but it’s also four hundred times farther away. That means when things line up jes’ right, the moon precisely covers the sun, completely blockin’ out the photosphere. When that happens you can see the corona—the sun’s atmosphere—and sometimes even see prominences shootin’ out into space.”

  “Incredible,” said Kelkad.

  Clete smiled. “That it is.”

  The eclipse occurred on a Wednesday at noon. The Tosoks and their entourage had just left Strasbourg, where they had toured the famous Gothic cathedral. To get an unobstructed view of the bowl of the sky, their specially modified tour bus had driven out into a vineyard in the French countryside.

  The sun was fifty-five degrees above the horizon as the silhouette of the moon slowly bit into its blazing disk. The humans were wearing eclipse-viewing glasses with fluorescent green-and-pink cardboard frames and Mylar lenses; the Tosoks always wore pop-in sunglasses while outdoors during the day, but now were using extra-strength versions so that they, too, could stare up at the spectacle.

  Slowly, ponderously, the black circular shadow of the moon covered more and more of the sun. As it did so the sky grew dim. A hush fell over the landscape; even the birds stopped singing to stare up in wonder. When the moon’s disk had almost completely blocked the sun, a row of Bailey’s beads was briefly visible at the disk’s edge—bright spots caused by sunlight passing through irregularities on the moon’s rim.

  And then…

  Totality.

  The temperature dropped noticeably. The sky went dark. Those who were willing to take their eyes off the main attraction for a moment could clearly see bright Venus below and to the left of the sun, and dimmer Mercury above it and to the right, along with a smattering of stars; the sun was halfway between Leo and Cancer.

  Around the black disk of the moon, a beautiful pink corona was visible, like wisps of hair, or a wild angel’s halo.

  It was absolutely incredible, absolutely breathtaking. Frank was deeply moved, and he saw Clete wipe tears from the corners of his eyes. The head tufts on the Tosoks were waving wildly in excitement.

  All too soon it was over, the moon continuing on its way, and the sky brightening.

  Kelkad strode over to Clete. “Thank you,” he said, his tuft still moving with emotion. “Thank you for letting us see that.”

  Clete smiled. “Like you said, nice planet we’ve got here.”

  Finally, the aliens returned to the United States, touring California. They visited Rogers Dry Lake to watch the Shuttle Discovery land (it had been up taking photographs and radar scans of the alien mothership to aid in the repair effort). Next, they came to Los Angeles—which happened to be Clete’s home now; he balanced his time between production of his TV series and teaching astronomy at UCLA. The aliens didn’t know what to make of Disneyland. They understood that Mickey, Goofy, and Donald were supposed to be a mouse, a dog, and a duck, respectively—they’d seen all three types of animals during their tour of Earth. But they were absolutely flummoxed by the idea of portraying them as erect, sentient, articulate beings. They were also amazed by most of the rides—the idea that one could enjoy being frightened struck them as a contradiction in terms. They did rather seem to like the Teacups, though.

  In the evening, a reception was held at Mann’s Chinese Theatre, with a select guest list. Steven Spielberg was there, taking a possibly justifiable pride in having to some degree prepared the human race for the arrival of peaceful, friendly aliens. Captain Kelkad was invited to leave his footprints in cement. This was something that the aliens did understand: the idea of making one’s mark, of being remembered after one was gone.

  Three of the prime contracts for building the replacement parts for the alien mothership went to TRW, Rockwell International, and Hughes. The president of the University of Southern California sensed a golden opportunity, since all three were located within fifteen miles of its main University Park campus. He immediately offered long-term accommodation to the Tosoks in Paul Valcour Hall, a brand new six-story-tall residence facility. The residence had been completed behind schedule—too late for the current academic year, so it wouldn’t be needed until next September. It was an ideal location—a hundred meters from any other campus building, meaning access to it was easy to control. The Tosoks accepted the offer, and they, and their scientific and security entourage, moved into the facility. Even Clete, whose home was in L.A., moved in, unable to give up a moment of time with the aliens.

  “Thank you for helping arrange all the repairs,” said Captain Kelkad one evening to Frank Nobilio, who had also taken up residence in Valcour Hall. “It is much appreciated.”

  “My pleasure,” said Frank. Hask and Torbat—one of the other Tosoks—were sitting with him and the alien captain in the sixth-floor lounge. “Of course, you realize it will take a long time for the replacement parts to be built. They’re saying perhaps as long as two years—”

  “Two years!” said Kelkad, his tuft waving in shock. “Surely it can be done—”

  Hask spoke a few words to Kelkad in the Tosok language.

  “Oh—two of your years,” said Kelkad. His tendrils came to rest. “That is not so bad.”

  Frank thought about telling the aliens that no human engineer’s time estimate was ever to be trusted, but decided they’d do better to cross that bridge later. For now, he thought, sitting here, chatting amiably with pale-blue Hask, dark-blue Kelkad, and gray Torbat, first contact between the human race and aliens seemed to be going spectacularly well.

  Until the murder.

  CHAPTER

  6

  Colin Elliot was an LAPD cop with ten years on the force. He was one of several officers doing rotating duty at Valcour Hall on the USC campus.

  It was three in the morning. Valcour Hall was L-shaped, with the two wings meeting in a widened-out lounge area on each floor. Even this late, two of the Tosoks were sitting in the lounge on the fourth floor; dozens of special Tosok chairs had been built in the university’s wood shop. Although the campus was pretty much deserted for Christmas break, most of the Tosoks, plus most of their entourage, had gone that evening to a public lecture being given by Stephen Jay Gould, held in the Davis Auditorium at the west end of the campus, just off McClintock Street. Still, they’d all gotten home several hours ago.

  The two Tosoks raised their front hands in greeting at Elliot. He flashed a Vulcan salute back at them. The other Tosoks were presumably in their rooms. Since the residence was so large, each individual had taken quarters a goodly distance fr
om everyone else’s. As Elliot made his way down the corridors he passed a couple of rooms that had their doors open. Through one, he saw a Tosok working at an alien computer brought down from the mothership. Through another, he saw a Tosok watching TV—an old episode of Barney Miller, one of Elliot’s own favorite shows. The Tosoks seemed to love sitcoms—maybe the laugh tracks helped point out for them what was funny to humans. He noted that the Tosok had the closed captioning turned on. They all could speak English with the aid of translating computers; perhaps the superimposed titles were helping this Tosok learn to read.

  The long corridors were divided up into shorter sections by heavy glass doorways; they weren’t fire doors, but they did provide some sound insulation. The Tosoks apparently had sensitive hearing, but weren’t the least disturbed by background noise. On the three floors that housed Tosoks, these doors were generally kept open; only on the human floors were they usually closed at night.

  Elliot came to the stairwell and made his way down to the third floor—one of the human floors. The humans, of course, were all asleep, and the main corridor lights were off. The only illumination came from lamps in a campus parking lot visible through floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the corridor, EXIT signs, and a few small safety lights. Elliot walked along, not expecting to see anything. He heard a sound as he passed one room, but, after pausing to listen for a moment, realized it was just snoring.

  Elliot arrived at one of the closed glass doors that broke up the long corridors into sections. He opened it, passed through the doorway, and continued on along the hallway. At one point he heard a toilet flush. He wasn’t surprised. Some of these eggheads were pretty old; they probably got up a couple of times a night to pee.

  The carpeting was industrial-strength, of course, and dark gray—designed to survive years of student use. Although Elliot weighed over two hundred pounds, it did a nice job of cushioning his footfalls, so there was little chance he’d wake—

  Squish.

  Elliot looked down. The carpet was wet. A spilled beverage, probably—

  No.

  No. The liquid was thick, sticky.

  And dark.

  Elliot had a flashlight clipped to his belt. He brought it up, thumbed on the beam, played it over the puddle.

  Red.

  It was blood, seeping out from under a closed door. There was light spilling out, too—the lights inside the room were on. Elliot took a handkerchief from his pocket, and using the pressure of just two fingers so as to minimize disturbance of any fingerprints, he opened the door.

  He’d expected it not to open all the way, but it swung freely back on its hinges, revealing the body.

  It’s one of those trivial facts that had stuck in Sergeant Elliot’s mind for years: a human being has one quart of blood for every thirty pounds of body weight.

  The dead man was skinny, but well over six feet tall. He’d probably weighed around one-seventy, which meant that he’d had something on the order of six quarts of blood—a gallon and a half.

  And it looked like damn near all of it was spread around the body, in a vast dark pool.

  It was surprising, in a way, that the first thing Elliot had noticed had been the quantity of spilled blood. Oh, certainly in any other murder that would have been the salient factor. But the corpse here had suffered far more than just a simple bleeding out.

  The right leg was severed from the body halfway down the thigh. Whatever had cut it off had done a remarkably clean job, slicing through the man’s jeans, leaving an edge on them as clean as if they’d been hemmed to that length. The leg had been severed just as neatly. Although the stump was now crusted over with a thick cap of dried blood, the cut looked as sharp as what a band saw would make through frozen meat. The actual leg, still wrapped in the tube of denim, its foot still socked and shod, was also present, bent gently at its knee, a short distance from the body.

  But even that wasn’t the worst of it.

  The head had been severed from the body and—God—the lower jaw had been sliced free from the head. He couldn’t see the jawbone anywhere, and—Christ—it looked like one of the eyeballs was missing, too.

  The torso had been opened up, in one long line leading from the bottom of the neck down the center of the chest all the way to the groin. The decedent’s shirt had been ripped open—not cut, but ripped, apparently before the cutting had begun. The individual buttons had been mostly torn free, and the shirt opened, its sides like wings, now stiff and dark and fused into the great pool of blood surrounding the body.

  The breastbone had been split in two, and the ribs spread apart left and right, sticking up like the maw of a bear trap from—

  —from the empty torso. The organs had been removed. Elliot knew enough anatomy to recognize the heart and lungs, lying a few feet from the body. The other lumps, all crusted over now, were doubtless spleen and liver and kidneys and more, but which was which, Elliot couldn’t say.

  At the bottom of the open chest cavity, there was all sorts of bluish-white connective tissue, and in places the vertebral column itself was exposed.

  The last thing Sergeant Elliot looked at in any detail was the jawless face, now absolutely white, right down to the waxlike upper lip. This was only Elliot’s second shift with the Tosok entourage; he didn’t yet know most of the humans, but this one was familiar enough.

  It was that guy from TV.

  Cletus Calhoun.

  Frank Nobilio was having the dream again. He was at university, in the sixties, wearing bell-bottoms and a flowered shirt. He was walking down a corridor when another student passing by wished him luck.

  “What for?” asked Frank.

  “For the exam, of course,” said the student.

  “Exam?”

  “In biochemistry.”

  Biochemistry. Oh, Christ. Frank remembered signing up for that course at the beginning of the academic year, but somehow he’d forgotten to go to every single one of the classes. And today was the final exam—an exam he’d not studied for at all. How in the hell did they expect him—?

  Frank found himself stirring into consciousness. Decades since he’d left university, but he still had that same damned dream. Oh, the details changed—sometimes it was American history he’d forgotten to take, sometimes statistics—but the basic story kept coming up over and over again, and—

  Insistent knocking at the door. An earlier barrage of it must have awoken him.

  “What is it?” Frank called out. His voice was raw; he’d been sleeping with his mouth open.

  “Dr. Nobilio? It’s the police.”

  Frank disentangled himself from the sheet, got shakily to his feet, and made it over to the dorm room’s door. He opened it, and his eyes squinted against the corridor light beyond. “Yes?”

  Two men stood in the hallway. One was Sergeant Ellis, Elliot, something like that, wearing a police uniform. The other Frank didn’t recognize: a compact man with an olive complexion, perhaps forty-five years old. He had wavy black hair, brown eyes, and a neat mustache. The small man flashed his ID. “Dr. Nobilio, I’m Detective Lieutenant Jesus Perez, LAPD. I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s been a murder.”

  Frank felt his jaw dropping. “Which one was it?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Which Tosok was killed?”

  Perez shook his head. “It’s not a Tosok, sir. It’s a human.”

  Frank let out a sigh of relief. Perez looked at him in shock. “Sorry,” said Frank. “I—I’m sorry. It’s just that, well, Christ, I hate to think what would happen if one of the Tosoks were murdered.”

  “We want you to identify the body, sir.”

  Frank’s heart skipped a beat. He was still waking up. “You mean it’s someone I know?”

  “Possibly, sir.”

  “Who?”

  “We believe it’s Cletus Calhoun, sir.”

  Frank felt like someone had driven a fist into his stomach.

  The general commotion had awo
ken some of the other humans, too. By the time Perez got Frank over to Clete’s room, Packwood Smathers and Tamara Slynova were already there, standing on the threshold just beyond the pool of blood. Smathers’s white hair was wild, and Frank had never seen Slynova without makeup. Frank was in his pajamas; Smathers had a robe on over his; Slynova seemed to be wearing nothing but a robe.

  Frank approached the doorway and looked in. Two LAPD criminalists were already working inside the room. Clete’s body had been covered by a white sheet, which was now stained with blood. The sheet tented up over the spread rib cage. Frank looked down on his friend’s face, missing its bottom part, the skin white as a marble statue’s. He fought the urge to vomit.

  “Well?” said Perez.

  “That’s him.”

  Perez nodded. “We thought so. Found his wallet on him. Do you know who his next of kin is?”

  “He’s not married. But he has a sister—Daisy, I think—in Tennessee.”

  “Any idea who would want to see him dead?”

  Frank looked at Packwood Smathers, then back at the body. “No.”

  Frank made his way through the second, fourth, and sixth floors—each of which housed Tosoks—accompanied by the German scientist, Kohl. They went down the corridors, pausing at each occupied room to ask the Tosok within to join them. The aliens filed out, and they all made their way to the lounge in the middle of the sixth floor. It was now 4:30 A.M.

  The Tosoks stood patiently. Frank did a quick head count—only six of them were present. Let’s see: there’s Captain Kelkad, and Rendo. Torbat. And—

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” said a voice. “What’s happening?”

  Frank turned around and had a shock almost as great as the one that had overtaken him when he saw Clete’s ruined body. Coming down the corridor with two-meter strides was a Tosok Frank had never seen before, with silvery skin.

  “Who—who are you?” said Frank.

  “Hask.”

  “But—but Hask has bluish skin.”