“Christ, I don’t know. He hates stuff like this, especially in an election year.”
“We have a client who did indeed kill a human being,” said Dale. “This may be Hask’s only hope, and—”
Dale’s intercom buzzed. He pounded the button. “Yes, Karen?”
“The courthouse just called. The jury has a verdict.”
Frank jumped to his feet, and even old Dale Rice managed to move his vast bulk quickly.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?” asked Judge Pringle.
Frank was seated behind Dale and Michiko. Hask had also returned; his tuft was moving in agitation. His front eyes were locked on the jury box; his back eyes were locked on Seltar, who was sitting alone in the bank of six Tosok chairs at the side of the courtroom. There was a hush over the room; every spectator and every reporter was leaning forward.
The foreperson, a thin black man in his early thirties, rose. “We have, Your Honor.”
“Please hand it to the clerk.” The paper was passed to the clerk, who carried the sheet to the judge’s bench. Drucilla Pringle unfolded the page and read the verdict. Judges were supposed to be stone-faced—they knew every eye in the court was on them at such moments. But Pringle was unable to prevent one of her eyebrows from climbing her forehead. She refolded the verdict and handed it back to the clerk.
“You may read the verdict, Mr. Ortiz.”
The clerk cleared his throat, then: “We, the jury in the above entitled case, find the defendant, Hask, not guilty of the crime of first-degree murder of Cletus Robert Calhoun, in violation of Penal Code section 187, as charged in count one of the information.
“And we further find that the defendant did not use a deadly weapon, to wit an alien cutting device, in the commission of this crime.
“And we further find that in the commission and attempted commission of the above offense the defendant, Hask, did not personally inflict great bodily injury upon Cletus Robert Calhoun, and was not an accomplice to the above offense, within the meaning of Penal Code section 12022.7.”
Frank let out a great cheer and reached over the wooden fence to thump Dale on the back. Michiko Katayama had thrown her arms as far around her boss as they would go and was hugging him. Seltar rushed over to embrace Hask across the wooden barrier between the audience section and the defense table.
For her part, Linda Ziegler was absolutely stunned, her eyes wide, her mouth hanging open a bit. Next to her, her second chair, Trina Diamond, just kept blinking.
“This is your verdict, so say you one, so say you all?” asked Judge Pringle, facing the jury.
The jurors nodded. “Yes,” they replied in unison.
“Counsel, do you wish the jurors polled?”
“No, ma’am,” said Dale, grinning from ear to ear.
“The People?” said the judge.
“Ah, no,” said Ziegler, after a moment. “No, Your Honor.”
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do you wish to address the lawyers?”
The jurors looked at each other. They certainly were under no obligation to do so, but California law permitted them this opportunity. The foreperson turned to Pringle. “Nothing we say now can weaken the power of our verdict?” he asked.
“That’s correct,” said Pringle. “What’s done is done.”
The foreperson nodded. “Then, yes, we would like to say something to the lawyers.”
“Go ahead, Mr. Foreperson.”
The man took a deep breath, then looked at Ziegler. “I’m sorry, Ms. Ziegler. You should have won. You had him dead to rights. I mean, we all agreed that he did do it. He did kill Mr. Calhoun.”
Ziegler’s eyes went even wider. “Jury nullification,” she said.
The foreperson looked at Pringle. “Your Honor, you instructed us in the law. But, well, we couldn’t bring ourselves to apply it.” He looked to Ziegler again. “Hask didn’t mean to kill Calhoun, so it wasn’t premeditated. Still, we could have found him guilty of a lesser charge, like involuntary manslaughter. But if we’d found him guilty, there might have been an appeal—the defense can appeal guilty verdicts, but the prosecution can’t appeal innocent ones, isn’t that right, judge?”
Pringle nodded. “In most cases, that’s essentially correct.”
“So we let him go. We let him go so he wouldn’t be jailed; after all, we all agreed he presented no threat to anyone else.” The foreperson looked at the other jury members, then turned back to the judge. He shrugged a little. “Yes, the rest of the crew are now in prison—but Kelkad did send a message to his home world, and other Tosoks will be coming to Earth at some point. Who knows what changes there have been in Tosok society in two hundred years? We thought that if these new Tosoks saw that we are a reasonable, compassionate, and forgiving people, then maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t wipe our planet clean of life.”
“I don’t understand,” said Frank. He stopped the grinning Dale before the lawyer stepped out of the courtroom into the crowd of waiting reporters. “What is—what did Ziegler call it?—‘jury nullification’? What’s that?”
“The jury is the conscience of the community,” said Dale. “They can do whatever they damn well please.”
“But the judge said they had to follow the law, whether they agreed with it or not.”
Dale shrugged. “Judges always say that—but, in fact, there’s no legislation to that effect, and plenty of precedent to the contrary. The jury never has to explain or justify its decision to anyone, and there’s no mechanism for punishing jurors for making a verdict that goes against the evidence. If they want to let someone go free, they’re entitled to do that.”
“Thank God for juries,” said Frank.
“For once,” said Dale, still grinning from ear to ear, “I agree with you.”
CHAPTER
39
No one expected to see another Tosok ship anytime soon. After all, the message Kelkad had sent from Earth to Alpha Centauri had to take 4.3 years to get to its destination, and the fastest any reply—whether a ship, or simply another message—could arrive was another 4.3 years later.
Or so people had thought.
But in the intervening two hundred years, the Tosoks had apparently discovered a way to outwit Einstein. The new vessel appeared without warning in orbit near the Tosok mothership just four and a half years after Kelkad had sent his message. Some astronomers declared they had detected a flash of Cerenkov radiation just as the ship appeared, and others were muttering things about hyperspace and tardyon/tachyon translations.
The new arrival was eighty meters long, and there were no right angles anywhere in its construction. Its hull was smooth—no vents, no projections, no apparent windows—and a mural had been painted on it. It was abstract, and no one was quite sure at first what it depicted. Only when it was imaged with cameras that saw well into the ultraviolet did the image become apparent.
The starboard side of the ship depicted a landscape of crystal mountains, what might have been treelike things with trunks made of chains of spheres, and a lake with either a giant floating city or boat in it, or an island every centimeter of which was covered by majestic spires and towers.
The port side showed what was obviously the Milky Way galaxy, as well as Andromeda, and the two Magellanic Clouds.
The alien ship simply orbited Earth for two days, but finally a small translucent sphere bubbled up out of its surface, then separated from it. The sphere simply dropped to the Earth at a speed of about five hundred kilometers an hour—fast, but not nearly fast enough to make for a fiery passage through the atmosphere. It slowed when it was about three kilometers up, and settled gently as a feather in the United Nations plaza, next to one of the Tosok landers; Hask and Seltar spent much time at the UN these days. Whether the new arrivals were aware of the significance of the UN, or had simply located the Tosok lander with some sort of scanner, no one could say for sure.
UN and U.S. troops were waiting for the spherical cra
ft. Tanks and bazookas were trained on it. It was unlikely that either could destroy the ship, but if more Tosoks came out, Earth would not go down without a fight.
The current U.S. president was in the underground command center in Virginia, built for use in case of nuclear war. Frank Nobilio was with him. They were in contact with the troops in New York via communications satellite, and were watching the live video feed being provided by CNN.
The alien ship was on the ground for about ten minutes before a door materialized in its side. One second, the curving wall was absolutely smooth; the next, a square hatch had appeared in it. The hatch dropped open, its curving doorway forming a ramp. The picture went wild for a moment as CNN’s camera operator tried to get a close-up of whatever was in the chamber.
It was not a Tosok.
The creature stood about 1.2 meters tall. It had radial symmetry, like a starfish. Six legs dropped down to the ground. Interspersed between them were six arms or tentacles that, incredibly, were lifted up above the creature’s torso, as if in surrender.
“Is that a lifeform?” said the president. “Or could it be a robot?”
Frank was science advisor to this president, as he had been to his predecessor. The camera operator was several hundred feet away, and every small jiggle of his equipment caused the zoomed-in image to bounce wildly. Frank nodded at the president. “It does look metallic…”
The thing stepped forward, onto the ramp. CNN cut for a second to a shot of the troops. Every weapon was trained on the starfish. It started down the ramp. Frank peered at the screen some more. “No—no, it’s not a robot. It’s wearing a space suit. See?” He pointed at the creature’s legs. Strapped to each one was a thin cylinder, presumably containing whatever gases the creature breathed.
“But Tosoks can breathe Earth air…” said the president.
Frank nodded. “Meaning not only is that not a Tosok, it’s not even from the same planet…”
“Why are its arms up in the air like that?”
Frank shrugged. “To show it’s not carrying any weapons?” A pause. “Mr. President, if it’s not a Tosok, and it’s not armed, you should get the troops to stand down.”
The president looked at one of the generals seated near him. “We still don’t know what it is,” said the soldier.
“For God’s sake, Karl,” said Frank to the general, “you saw its mothership—if it wanted to kill us, it could have done so from orbit.”
The president spoke into a telephone handset. “It’s our recommendation to the UN commander that the military forces assume an at-ease posture.”
The alien continued to move forward.
“Frank,” said the president. “We need to talk to that thing. Can we communicate with it the way we did with the Tosoks?”
Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, eventually, sure, at least about some basic math and science, but—” His eyebrows went up. “It may not be a Tosok, but I bet it knows how to speak the Tosok language. After all, it presumably came in response to Kelkad’s message.”
“So?”
“So send Hask out to greet it.”
CHAPTER
40
On second thought, it was deemed better to send a human out to make first contact. There were those who still didn’t trust Hask or Seltar, and the two Tosoks might also be in danger from this new alien: they were, after all, traitors to their own people.
Since Frank Nobilio was the only living person with direct experience at first contact, the job fell to him. He was flown from the Virginia command center to the UN aboard a two-seater Marine Corps Harrier TAV-8B VTOL jet, dispatched from a training squadron at Cherry Point, North Carolina.
Once he’d arrived in New York, Hask and Seltar greeted Frank in an office inside the looming monolith of the Secretariat building.
“It is good to see you, friend Frank,” said Hask.
“You, too,” said Frank. “You recognize that ship?” The alien vessel was visible through the mirrored office window.
“No,” said Hask. “But that is meaningless. So much may have changed in the intervening centuries since our departure.” The male Tosok’s tuft waved. “Whatever happens now, Frank—to you, and to your world—I thank you for your previous help, and ask you to remember that humanity had at least a few friends beyond this planet.”
Frank nodded. “I will.”
Seltar raised her front hand, bringing it tentatively toward Frank’s head. “May I?” she said.
Frank was momentarily taken aback, but then paused and smiled. Seltar’s four flat-tipped fingers tousled Frank’s hair, which was now mostly gray. When she was done, Frank used his right hand to briefly stroke Seltar’s tuft, and then, in a move that clearly surprised the male Tosok, he reached over and mussed Hask’s tuft as well.
“I have to go,” said Frank. “Can’t keep our new visitors waiting.”
Hask took his portable computer, with its cross-shaped keypad, from its pouch on his tunic and handed it to Frank. Frank took the elevator down to the ground floor and walked slowly across the United Nations parking lot, toward the spherical ship. The twelve-limbed alien had retreated into its lander some time ago. Frank was afraid he was going to have to go right up to the landing craft and knock on its hull, but when he got within about fifteen meters of the lander, the door appeared again and the alien—or another one just like it—came out.
Frank held up the portable computer, hoping the alien would recognize it, and know what to do with it. It was a gamble: Frank certainly wouldn’t recognize a specialized Italian farm implement from A.D. 1800, let alone one from a culture that wasn’t his own; there was no real reason to think that the newcomer would recognize a two-century-old Tosok computer.
The alien reached out with one of its long arms—from the way it moved, it appeared to be jointed every twenty-five centimeters or so, rather than being a tentacle of pure muscle. Frank took a deep breath and continued to close the distance between them. The alien was indeed wearing some sort of space suit, made of a silvery fabric. There was a clear strip, though, near where each leg joined the torso, and through it Frank could see the creature’s real skin, a scaly yellowish gold. The clear strips were meant to allow the alien’s eyes to peer out—Frank could see two oval-shaped eyes, one atop the other, on each leg. The eyes had lids that closed from left to right, but no two eyes on the same leg ever seemed to shut simultaneously. The tanks of gas on the legs joined directly to the suit at the base of each leg; presumably that’s where the creature’s six breathing orifices were located.
Frank continued to hold the computer out in front of him. Because of the alien’s short height, he could look right down on it from above. It really did seem to be perfectly radially symmetrical; if it had a preferred front side, Frank could see no indication of it. One of the six arms reached out to Frank. Although its tip was gloved in the same silvery material, Frank could see that it was bifurcated. The two branches easily plucked the computer from Frank’s hand. The suit had been warm to the touch; it was radiating excess heat—the alien perhaps came from a cooler world than this one.
The alien folded its arm back, bringing the computer up to one of its vertical pairs of eyes. It turned it around, apparently unsure how to hold it. Frank’s heart fell—they’d have to start over from scratch, apparently, trying to learn to communicate.
Suddenly a second starfish alien emerged from the spherical lander. It came toward Frank quickly, its body rotating as it did so. When it got close, Frank saw that it had something in one of its hands—a device that ended in precisely the same sort of tripronged connector he’d come to associate with Tosok technology. The second alien took Hask’s computer from the first alien and plugged it into the device it had brought along. Lights began flashing on both devices.
Frank was aware of a high pitched buzzing sound, barely audible. At first he thought it was coming from Hask’s computer, but his ears soon focused better on the source. The two aliens were apparently conversi
ng, using mostly ultrasonics. The buzz alternately came from one of them, then the other.
The lights stopped flashing on Hask’s computer. The second alien disengaged it from the device he’d brought, and proffered it to Frank. Frank was surprised, but took it back. The alien handed the other device to the first alien, then twirled back a dozen meters.
The buzzing started again from the first alien, and within seconds, the synthesized voice Frank had come to associate with Hask was emerging from the device the starfish creature was now holding. “Do you understand me?” said the voice.
“Yes,” said Frank, his heart pounding with excitement.
“There is no accepted way to render my own individual name in the subset of the Tosok vocal range that you apparently communicate with. Please assign to me a name whose sound you can replicate.”
Frank was momentarily lost. “Umm—Tony. I’ll call you Tony.”
“Tony. And you are?”
“Frank.”
“We came as soon as we received the Tosok message. I saw from orbit that we were not too late.”
“Too late?”
“To keep your planet from being wiped clean of life.”
“You came to prevent that?”
“We did. The Tosoks tried to extinguish us as well. We are…resilient. They have been subdued.”
Frank felt his features spreading into a broad grin. “Welcome to Earth, friend.”
The new aliens—already dubbed Twirlers by CNN’s correspondent—were originally from the star humans called Epsilon Indi, which, although it was eleven light-years from Earth, was only nine from Alpha Centauri. The Twirlers had begun using radio centuries before humanity had, and so a high-speed Tosok mothership had been dispatched to that star, arriving there thirty-odd years ago. Although it took decades, the Twirlers had managed to defeat the Tosoks.
There were twenty-six Twirlers aboard their beautiful mothership, but it was Tony who served as the sole communicator with humanity. And today, Tony was addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations. He stood at the same lectern Kelkad had used five years before, the great seal of the planet he’d so recently arrived upon spread out behind him, embraced by olive leaves.
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