Only Human (Themis Files #3)(42)
—The world doesn’t like us very much anymore. And I don’t have the answer to your question. I don’t know if this is better. All I know is that we tried it your way before, and a lot of people died.
—There would have been more.
—Are you sure about that?
—Yes!
—Elsewhere, maybe. But here? Our armed forces were spread out all over the world … My parents were in New York. My friends. Maybe, just maybe, some of them would still be alive if we’d only taken care of our people.
—That’s nonsense. A minute ago you were ready to put your family in a camp, just in case. And don’t talk to me about New York. I was there, remember. I lost people too. A lot of us did.
—I know. And you left. Themis was there, and she left. You left everyone behind.
—Themis couldn’t fight. And I didn’t leave. I was locked inside a glass room waiting to die. I watched a friend die right in front of me. So don’t talk to me about loss as if I didn’t suffer. I survived. Those are two very different things.
— …
—And tell me, what would you have done if we’d had all our armed forces? All our tanks, all our planes. Say they were all there, all in New York by some crazy miracle. What would you have done? Bomb the city? Your parents were in it. The Russians tried that in Moscow. We nuked Madrid for no reason, and it didn’t help.
—We didn’t bomb Madrid. The aliens destroyed it.
—I must remember it wrong, then. Maybe we should have nuked New York. Would that have helped?
—How about I give you that tour, now?
—I think I’ll walk the city. It’d be a shame to spend such a nice day inside. But I do have one question.
—By all means.
—The robot, Lapetus, you call it. It’s the one I disabled in Central Park, isn’t it?
—Yes, it is.
—Then I’m curious. When we assembled Themis, we couldn’t get her working without all the pieces. How did you manage to make this one work without one of its legs? We understood so very little about how those pieces work when I left, I—
—We still don’t. Well, at least I don’t. We do high-level research here, anything connected to Lapetus is handled directly by the military. We don’t even have access to it, not to the parts that work. We have the nonfunctioning leg in storage. Would you like to see it?
—No thank you. I know where I need to go.
FILE NO. 2137
INTERVIEW BETWEEN MAJOR KATHERINE LEBEDEV, RUSSIAN MAIN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (GRU), AND VINCENT COUTURE
Location: GRU building, Saint Petersburg, Russia
—Vincent, I’d like you to meet Sergeant Vasiliev.
[It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Couture.]
—Hi! So you’re my copilot.
[I think you are my copilot.]
I like him.
—I knew you would.
—Where did you find him?
—Prison.
—Really?
[I did nothing wrong.]
—He’s right about that. My original idea was to test everyone in work camps—
—How? I didn’t think you had a blood test for pilots.
—We still don’t. I thought we could bring everyone here and have them try the helmets.
—That’s crazy. It would take—
—I assumed we’d find someone after a few thousand tries. The camps are filled with the right kind of people, so part of the job is already done, but you didn’t let me finish. I was about to start when I remembered we put everyone with military training in prison instead of camps. We didn’t want trained soldiers stirring up trouble.
—So that’s where they found you? I bet you were happy to get out of there.
[I won’t miss the food.]
Your English is pretty good. Why is it that every Russian I meet speaks English?
[I lived in Canada before. Like you, right? Bonjour. Je m’appelle Alexander.]
Nice. What’d you do? Were you a spy?
[I play hockey.]
Oh! Cool!
[When do we start? Major said you’d teach me how to fight.]
I have to teach you how to walk first. Have you ever done any modeling?
[Is he serious, Major?]
—I’m afraid he is. Just do what he says, Sergeant.
[Do I take orders from him?]
Good question! Vincent is the only one who knows how this thing works, so you kinda have to do what he says. But he’s not military. Would you like to be, Vincent? I can make you a captain!
—No, Katherine, I don’t want to be a captain in the Russian Army … Look, Alex—can I call you Alex?—this thing, it works on trust more than anything else. I can’t … tell you what to do because by then it’ll be too late. You need to … I’m a center. You play wing. We need to anticipate each other.
[She said I have to shoot you if you do anything wrong.]
—Really? What part of trust—
—Only during training, Vincent. After that, we’ll have something less …
—Crazy?
—I was thinking ominous.
—No, Katherine. Having someone behind you with a gun pointed at your head all day isn’t ominous. It’s insanely stupid, ridiculously dangerous. I think you need more words.