—You do realize there are…other ways for people to have children? Did you ever wonder why I would encourage two people in a military unit to pursue a relationship?
—I don’t think that’s why you did it. I think you liked them. Maybe you thought it would make them work better together.
—If I have, in any way, willingly or not, led you to believe I was remotely interested in your opinion of me, it was my mistake. It will not happen again.
—It doesn’t matter why you did it. I was also hoping their children, in the tr…traditional sense, could pilot the robot. It would be the best-case scenario. Make a dozen babies, each of them could operate either station. But their ch…children would only have half of each parent’s ge…genes, maybe not the good half. It might not work. I couldn’t wait and see. I had to try cloning them too. I had to see if I could splice animal genes into theirs so their legs could bend the right way.
—You are mad.
—Am I? What would you have done if they had children? Cut open one of their kids and remove all of his leg bones so his knees would bend backwards? Now that would be cruel. I don’t think they would have volunteered for that. You just didn’t think…think this through. At least my plan didn’t involve mmm…mutilating anyone.
—Were you successful?
—Of course not! You drove me out of my lab before I could even begin. The aliens came sooner than I had hoped, but surely you can see now that I was right?
—Three minutes ago, I told you that I would take great pleasure in seeing you tried for your crimes. To most, that would suggest that…No, I do not think that you were right.
—Imagine that the aliens had come a f…few years later, and that Kara had been injured. How many more people would have died in London? Would they have st…stopped after London? If I had offered you a new pilot to replace her, would you have said no?
—I can imagine a world in which you saved us all and became a hero. In that world, I would ask for your forgiveness and solemnly watch as the president pins a medal to your chest. Fortunately for me, I do not live in that world. Based on my experience, your sentence will probably also be based on facts and not on what could have been.
—I don’t think so.
—You do not think it will be based on facts?
—I don’t think there’ll be a trial.
—Surprising as it may seem, most governments will not summarily execute people if there is no reason to forgo a trial. They view such things as…unbecoming.
—I don’t think you’ll t…turn me over to the Americans, not before you get me a f…full pardon.
—Are we still in living in this make-believe world of yours?
—You don’t seem to like hypotheticals, so let’s see how far your con…conviction goes in real life. I didn’t have time to clone anyone at the lab. I barely had time to grab a few specimens before the Marines st…stormed in. I had a fake passport the Russians had given me, but you can’t…you can’t t…travel with biological samples without anyone’s asking questions. So I stopped by a fertility clinic before I left the island and arranged for them to use the…specimens I gave them. There were four eggs. Three didn’t take. One did.
—What are you saying?
—I’m saying there is a ten-year-old girl in Puerto Rico with b…beautiful green eyes who might just be able to pilot that gi…giant robot of yours. Of course, you’ll never find out if you don’t g…give me what I want.
—And what is that?
—A full pardon. And I want to be back on the research team.
—You are insane. Puerto Rico is about one hundred miles across. How long do you think it will take me to find a ten-year-old girl?
—I don’t know. P…probably a few weeks without records to help. She’ll be gone by the time you find her. I was on my way to retrieve her, bring her to Russia so they can s…start training her. They’ll know I didn’t make my flight. They’ll go after her.
—What makes you think I will not simply have you killed after you help us find her?
—Oh, I tr…trust you. You would find it…unbecoming.
FILE NO. 1534
RESEARCH LOG—VINCENT COUTURE, CONSULTANT, EARTH DEFENSE CORPS
Location: Unknown
This is Vincent Couture recording aboard Themis. I’m…I have no idea where I am. I can’t see outside. It’s pitch-black all around. I don’t think I’m in space. There aren’t any stars. I can shift the weight between Themis’s feet, so we’re definitely standing on solid ground. I can hear…something. It’s a…a very low hum. Like a lightsaber that’s not moving, if that means anything. My best guess at this point is that I’m in the ocean somewhere and that’s the sound of water moving against the hull.
I don’t know exactly how I got here, but I have a pretty good idea. I was trying to figure out if Themis could…teleport herself when it happened. Rose and I had been talking about it since London. We thought it would make sense for her to move that way. Well, more sense than having little rockets under her feet, or wings that spring out her back. She weighs seventy-two hundred tons, after all.
It was all wishful thinking really, because we were hoping for something quite different from what we saw in London. It came from outer space, so no matter what it used to get here, it must have worked in a three-dimensional space. That would be almost impossible for us to use here on Earth. The planet’s surface is curved, there is terrain to consider. Traveling farther than what you can see would be really complicated. You could end up inside a mountain, miles deep into the Earth’s crust, or a few kilometers up in the air. What Rose and I wanted was…something user-friendly. Something Apple would make: a gizmo that lets you treat the planet as a flat surface and does all the work for you. Just push a button and end up where you want to go, with both feet on the ground, not inside or above it. Anyway, I went to the lab early to try a few things on the console before Kara got there—she gets angry when she can’t help. At some point, I hit a key. Everything went white, silent. Then I was here. So, the good news is: Themis can travel anywhere!
The bad news is I think I’m gonna die here before I can tell anyone.