“God,” said Dale. “You came here to wipe out all the life on Earth.”
“Not all the life, Dale—I doubt we could do that, anyway. But we certainly intended to wipe out all the vertebrates, just to be on the safe side.”
Frank felt his jaw go slack. All the vertebrates. Jesus Christ. It was so big, so massive—and then, all of a sudden, it had a human face. Maria. They would kill her, along with everything else. “That’s—that’s monstrous,” said Frank, his voice quaking with rage. “That’s downright evil. What gives you the right to go around the galaxy, wiping out whole planets?”
“A very good question,” said Hask. He looked at Seltar, then continued. “We used to think we were the divinely created children of God—and that, of course, would be sufficient to give us the right to do whatever we deemed necessary; if God did not want us to do it, after all, she would thwart our attempt. But when we discovered that that is not true, that we are merely products of evolution, well, then, the question of having the right to do something no longer enters into it. Survival of the fittest, no? The struggle for life, no? Competition, no? If we can advantage our species, then we have the right and the obligation to do so.”
“Jesus,” said Dale.
“I agree,” said Hask.
“Pardon?”
“Do I misunderstand you? When you invoke the name of your putative savior in that tone of voice, you are expressing disgust, no?”
“Well—yes.”
“Then we do agree. I share your disgust, and so does Seltar. But we are a tiny minority. Our hope was that once the others met you, they would realize that it would be inappropriate to wipe your planet clean of life. But they have not wavered in their plan. Indeed, if it had not been for the accident in your Kuiper belt, they would have already completed that task: our mothership is equipped with a high-powered wide-angle particle-beam weapon, which we would have trained on your world from orbit. In short order, we would have irradiated the entire surface of your planet. Indeed, the other Tosoks still intend to do that, once the repairs are complete.”
Dale’s deep voice: “Do the other Tosoks know that you’re a… a…”
“A traitor?” Hask lifted his front and back shoulders, an acquired human gesture. “Do not hesitate to say it; I am comfortable with the term. No, they do not. We had two possible hopes. The first was to prove that your race was divinely created—if we could show that you were the true children of God, our people would never have harmed you. But your form is as imperfect as ours.”
“And the other hope?”
“Seltar. If the mothership was repaired, and the attack on Earth imminent, then Seltar would sabotage the ship—something she could only do if no one suspected her existence. The eight of us would have been marooned here, but that would be—what is your metaphor?—a small price to pay.”
“If you woke up first, why not just disable the ship then?” asked Dale.
“I do wish to return home, counselor.”
“You could have killed the other Tosoks in their sleep,” said Frank.
“God did not move me to do that; despite what happened to Clete, I am no murderer.”
Frank’s voice was hard. “And what, precisely, did happen to Clete?”
“He discovered that Seltar was still alive. I had been careless. While the others were off at the lecture by that paleontologist, I took the opportunity to contact Seltar by radio; I missed her so much, I could not bear not to speak with her. Although my translator was off, Clete overheard me—I had not realized that he, too, had demurred from attending the lecture to work on his script, and he had the habit of pacing the halls as he thought of what he wanted to write. Clete realized that I was speaking to a Tosok other than the ones at the lecture—and doing so in realtime. I chased him back to his quarters and tried to explain to him the necessity of keeping the secret. He said he would not tell anyone—but I could tell he was lying; his face had grown brighter.”
“What?” said Dale.
“His face grew brighter—all your faces do that when you lie; I noted the correlation within days of arriving on Earth.”
“You mean you saw him blush?” asked Dale.
“No—blush is to change color, is it not? No, I said brighten.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Frank. “We suspected you guys could see into the infrared, but…”
“What?” said Dale.
Frank looked at the lawyer. “He sees infrared—he sees heat. Even if a person isn’t visibly blushing, capillaries do dilate in the cheeks, causing the cheeks to warm. Hask here is a walking lie detector.”
“As you say,” said Hask. “I had no doubt of Clete’s intentions. The moment I left, he was going to rush off to the lecture hall to tell you, Dr. Nobilio. I could not allow that—I could not risk that you, or someone you would tell, would reveal the information to Kelkad and the others. Remember, the other Tosoks all knew when you were lying, too.” He paused. “I— I just wanted to restrain Clete long enough to bring him proof of what the other Tosoks were going to do, in hopes that he would make a sincere promise of silence… so I encircled his leg with the monofilament. I told him that if he struggled at all it would cut through him, but… but he did struggle.” Hask paused, and his tuft waved in sadness. “I am so sorry. I meant only to detain him. But he kept bleeding and bleeding. I have never seen so much blood in my life.”
“So, with him dead, you decided to dissect the body,” said Frank.
“Yes. Do you not see? I was looking for proof of perfection in its design. I wanted so much to find proof of that—it would have saved your race. But instead I found design flaw after design flaw. I could not dispose of the corpse, but I did manage to steal at least some of the most egregiously obvious evidence of evolution rather than inspired design. The bad design of the throat was obvious at a glance, especially since I had already seen you choke on some water, Frank. The eye was harder—but my pocket computer allowed me to do a decent scan of its structure. And as I traced your digestive system—messy thing that it is—I found that closed tube that seemed to do nothing at all. By wrapping them up and tossing them in the trash, I had hoped to delay the others discovering that your race is not divine.”
“But why didn’t you just come forward and tell the world the truth?” asked Dale. “For God’s sake, you were interviewed by Barbara Walters. You could have simply said, while the cameras were rolling, that your people have come to destroy us. Then we would have apprehended all the other Tosoks. End of problem.”
“Counselor,” said Hask, “surely you do not think all of us would have come down to Earth’s surface without some way to control and operate our mothership remotely? Yes, our main engine is damaged, but the fusion reactor still functions, and the particle-beam weapon is in working order. Kelkad has surgically implanted in his person a device that can activate the weapon from the ground. True, using it while he is still on the surface would kill him and the rest of the Tosoks, but he would view that as proper fulfillment of his destiny, and it would accomplish the primary mission: sterilizing the surface of your planet. If any attempt is made to arrest him, I have no doubt that Kelkad will trigger the weapon.”