Illegal Alien

Hask couldn’t use a chair with a back because of his rear arm. A yeoman got a stool from somewhere, but Hask didn’t seem to have any desire to sit on it.

Clete and Frank continued teaching the alien English; so far, it had shown no interest in reciprocating by teaching the humans its language.

They showed Hask various objects, and spoke their names aloud. The Tosok reached into one of his many pockets and pulled out the small rectangular device that had been helping him with translations. It was the first good look Frank and Clete had got at it. The object was made of something that looked more like ceramic than plastic or metal. There was a cross-shaped arrangement of buttons on it, with six green buttons in each arm of the cross and a blue one in the center, and on its side was a three-holed aperture for some sort of connector. The back of this handheld computer contained a viewscreen, and the computer apparently was also a scanner — Hask could display the interior structure of the objects Frank and Clete showed him, as well as magnify them enormously to study fine details.

The humans also drew pictures on a pad to represent a variety of mathematical and physical concepts. At one point Clete — who was a much better artist than Frank — produced an image of Earth, with an object in polar orbit around it.

"What is that?" asked Frank.

"Ship," said Hask.

"How many Tosoks?"

"Six."

"Six plus Hask?"

"Six plus Hask equals seven."

"Big ship," said Frank.

"Big ship for big walk," said Hask.

"Big journey," corrected Frank.

"Big journey," repeated Hask.

They didn’t yet have the vocabulary to ask from where the alien had come, but—

"How long journey?" asked Frank.

"Long. Big long."

Frank went to the porthole and motioned for Hask to follow. Hask placed mirrored lenses over his front eyes again and came over to stand beside Frank. Frank pointed at the sun, then made a circular motion with his arm, hopefully indicating the concept of a day.

"No," said Hask. It was frustrating. Sometimes Hask grasped what Frank was getting at quickly; other times it took repeated tries to get even a simple concept across. But Hask moved back to the table and took the marker from Clete’s hand — the first direct physical contact between human and Tosok. He then took the drawing of the Earth that Clete had made, lifted it up in his front hand, and pointed at the porthole and the sun beyond with his back hand. Hask then moved the picture of the Earth in a circular motion.

"He’s saying it’s not a question of days, Frankie," said Clete. "It’s a question of years."

"How many?" said Frank. "How many years?"

Hask used his front hand to manipulate the buttons on his pocket computer. The unit said something. Hask pushed another button, and this time the computer replied in English. "Two hundred eleven."

"You’ve been traveling for two hundred and eleven Earth years?" said Frank.

"Yes," said Hask.

Frank looked at Clete, whose mouth was hanging open in astonishment.

Hask picked up spoken English at a phenomenal rate. One of the things Frank had brought with him was the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, on CD-ROM, which had recorded pronunciations. There was no way to electronically interface Hask’s pocket computer with Frank’s multimedia notebook, but while Frank slept, Hask, who seemed to have no need for sleep, worked his way through the two thousand line drawings included with the CD, and for the ones that made sense to him, he listened to the pronunciations. By the time Frank woke up the next morning, Hask had substantially increased his vocabulary. How much of it was Hask’s own native facility, and how much of it was the doing of his pocket computer, Frank couldn’t say. Hask had explained that the computer could communicate directly to him, apparently by a receiver implanted in one of Hask’s four evenly spaced ear slits (slits that were all but invisible against his gridwork of scales).

Concrete nouns were the easiest for him to learn — Frank had begun calling Hask him rather than it, although they still hadn’t worked out the being’s gender. Synonyms confused Hask, though — the idea of having more than one word to express exactly the same concept was utterly foreign to him.

Clete, who was trying to divine whatever he could about Hask’s home world, suggested to Frank that this meant that Tosok culture had always been monolithic, with a single language — most English synonyms were adopted from other languages. Frank used this as another argument to keep on teaching Hask only English, despite the Russians’ continued complaints.

The Kitty Hawk was still two days from New York. Hask could have flown there himself in his lander, or been taken there in one of the aircraft carrier’s planes. But it seemed better to give humanity in general and the United Nations in particular a little time to prepare for the arrival of the alien.