Waking Gods (Themis Files #2)(51)

—I don’t think so.

—Can you think of another reason?

—Nope. But I still don’t think so.

—Do you wish to elaborate, or is that the extent of your reasoning?

—You’ve seen where I live.

—You live in a hotel.

—I meant outside the city.

—I have, but I fail to see the point.

—If you could build these things, these robots—they can make giant structures with a more or less self-sustaining energy source, solid light that can cut through metal, and God knows what else—would you wanna move in that crappy house? I have a white picket fence and a sick crab apple tree. The plumbing is like a hundred years old, the windows are drafty. There’s a good view, but that house is shit! Why would they want to live in there? I can’t imagine downtown Moscow has a lot more to offer.

—Then—

—I think you’re right. I think there’s a reason they’re using that gas and not vaporizing everything. I don’t know what that reason is, but I don’t think they’re looking for a place to stay. I just can’t figure out what they could possibly gain by wiping us off the planet.

—Whatever their incentive may be, they will undoubtedly succeed if we do not find a way to stop them.

—I don’t think you or I will be the ones to do it. If the science guys don’t come up with anything, there isn’t much we can do but watch.

—NATO is preparing for a nuclear strike.

—What? Are they crazy?

—I did not suggest it, but as I do not have a viable alternative, I could not find a good reason to argue against it.

—Goddammit! How about they’ll blow up millions of innocent folks? It won’t stay there long enough for us to evacuate. They’ll nuke a city full of people.

—People who will undoubtedly die when the aliens attack.

—Maybe, but at least we’re not doing the job for them! Oh, and it won’t work. You know it won’t work.

—I do not know that.

—You should. There’ll be fallout for hundreds of miles. They’ll contaminate the water, the soil, everything. People’ll get sick. People’ll die. A lot more people than that gas will kill, I tell you. They’ll die a shitty death too. This is a dumb idea. There’s no way to explain how dumb an idea this is.

—There could be eighty million people breathing alien gas as we speak. There might be eighty million dead in less than twenty minutes. We have to do … something.

—I told you: Rose can do something, the science team can. You and I can’t do anything, you made sure of that.

—That is not true.

—You’re a real piece of work, I hope you know that. I’m the commander of the EDC. That means I control the one and only thing on this planet that could fight, or at least distract the bad guys. Only that one thing is sitting in a hangar because someone didn’t wanna tell my pilots they had a daughter.

—I did not know that they had a daughter.

—You told me they did! That’s why I’m missing a pilot.

—I merely relayed the information that was passed on to me by Ms. Papantoniou. I was never able to verify said information.

—Well, you must think she’s telling the truth. You have that psychopath working in my lab now.

—Her knowledge of genetics is the sole reason for her presence in this facility. She is unarguably a competent scientist and a very intelligent woman. However, neither of these things are any indication that she is telling the truth.

—Then why not tell everyone? You’ve known for like a decade.

—What I knew ten years ago and what Ms. Papantoniou is claiming now are very different things. The reason for my silence, then and now, should be self-evident. Ms. Resnik would have scoured the world to find her. She would have done so a decade ago.

—And yet you thought it was a good idea to tell that criminal moron all about it.

—I will admit that sharing vital information with Mr. Mitchell was a miscalculation on my part, one I am trying very hard to remedy, and that the timing of my mistake was unfortunate.

—It’s the end of the world.

—Very unfortunate.

—That’s better.

—If you allow me to focus this conversation on the problem at hand rather than on my personal shortcomings— —By all means.

—When I said: “That is not true,” I was not refusing responsibility for our inability to act, I meant that there was something we could do. You are correct in stating that a permanent solution, if there is one, will come from Dr. Franklin and her team, but you and I should do what we can to give her some extra time.

—How do you suppose we do that?

—If we cannot stop the aliens from killing people, we can at the very least try to make the task more time-consuming.

—How?

—We could ask everyone living in large urban areas to find a less populated place of refuge.

—Every city in the world? Are you out of your goddamn mind?

—We could start with every city of over two million people.

—Have you looked out the window lately? There are forty-five thousand soldiers patrolling the streets of New York, twenty thousand police officers pulling sixteen-hour shifts. There’s looting, people are getting killed. They’re barely able to keep things under control, and that’s with us lying through our teeth telling them there’s nothing to worry about. What do you think’s gonna happen if we tell people they should leave? Besides, where would they go?