Only Human (Themis Files #3)(62)

—Yes. Yes. I’m sorry.

—There was this axolotl named Jeff. Jeff was sort of a local hero. He had once fought an African tilapia, all on his own, and lived to tell the tale. Axolotls are known for their ability to regrow limbs, but Jeff had lost all four of his legs along with his tail during that David and Goliath moment of his, and none of them grew back to their original size. Suffice it to say that Jeff looked kind of funny. But regardless of Jeff’s physical appearance, he was a good storyteller and little axolotl jaws dropped every time he told the tale of how he lost his tail. Not long after the ordeal, Jeff had decided that he would use what happened to him to do some good, make the salamander world a better place. He began giving motivational speeches to everyone who would listen—and everyone would listen. Even tiger salamanders would stop by to listen to Jeff. He became known across the lake for his pep talks, a little Tony Robbins with gills.

Jeff had a daughter, Lisa, a beautiful lizard-like baby girl with light pink skin and bright, purple gill stalks—they call those rami. Every little girl in town was jealous of Lisa’s rami. Lisa was happy—she smiled all the time—but Lisa was also shy, very shy. She faded away in axolotl company and, like any good father, Jeff wanted her to blossom. “It’s OK, Dad,” she said, “not everyone is a hero like you.”

But Jeff believed everyone had it in them to be a hero. After all, there was nothing really special about him. He wasn’t the biggest axolotl on the block, nor the baddest, and he had fought a giant tilapia. No one knows how big that tilapia really was; it grew a little every time Jeff told the story. I’m sure even Jeff didn’t know anymore. But he had fought a fish, that’s for sure. If he, clumsy, nerdy-looking axolotl that he was, could do something like that, surely greatness was within everyone’s reach. Lisa too was a hero. She’d just never had the opportunity to show it. All she really needed, Jeff thought, was a push, to be put in a situation where she’d have no choice but to be the best amphibian she could be.

So Jeff took Lisa with him for a long walk. When his abnormally short legs got tired, he found a good spot on top of a rock where they both could rest. He waited, and waited. Lisa wanted to go home, but Jeff told her to be patient. Finally, he spotted an Asian carp coming their way. The carp wasn’t as big as the elephantine tilapia he had once wrestled, but Lisa was young, and Jeff figured that vanquishing a midsize carp would be enough for someone her age. Jeff hugged his baby girl, gave her a big kiss, and threw her off the rock, right in the path of the bottom feeder.

The moral of the story is—

—Wait! Wait! What happened? What happened to Lisa?

—The carp ate her, of course. She was just a baby! You didn’t really think she was gonna make it, did you?

—I … Yes, I did …

—You want to know the moral of the story.

—I do!

—The moral of the story is … Jeff is a moron. A baby axolotl can’t fight a fish! You can’t expect babies to do the things adults do. You can’t expect anyone to do things they can’t do. If you ask me to lift five hundred pounds, I can’t. It doesn’t matter how much I want to, how much conviction I put into it. It’s just not something I can do. Maybe if I’d been training all my life, but not now, not tomorrow. The people on this planet knew nothing of real aliens before Themis was found, they had never seen one until the Ekt came to Earth. Now that I think of it, they still haven’t seen one. They’ve only seen those giant robots but never those inside them. They make first contact, and millions die. Then they learn they’re all a bit alien, some more than others. They weren’t prepared for this, for any of it. They can’t even comprehend what it means about who they are, their place in the universe. All they know is a bunch of people are dead, and their neighbor is more like those who killed them than they are. Fear is a pretty normal reaction if you ask me! The people on this planet are babies! Don’t ask them to act like grown-ups. Don’t push them in front of a carp.

—You’re right.

—I know I’m right! I wouldn’t say things if I thought they were wrong!

—We’re a bunch of babies, a few billion of them, all scared to death. We’re going to kill ourselves if we’re left to our own devices. What we need is …

—What do we need, Dr. Franklin?

—We need … Jeff.

—What? No! Jeff is a moron! I thought we covered that.

—OK, maybe not Jeff, but you just said it, we’re all babies. There aren’t any adults around. We need grown-ups. We need adult supervision. There’s a reason we weren’t prepared. We didn’t ask for this. We haven’t done anything! Don’t take this the wrong way, but this isn’t our mess, it’s yours, the Ekt’s. The Ekt killed millions of us. They did. They scared us to death and left us running around chasing our tail because they didn’t want to interfere any more than they had to. But here’s the thing, they had to. It’s their fault! It’s all their fault. They came here three thousand years ago and fundamentally changed who we are. They screwed with the very fabric of life on this planet. They are responsible. It doesn’t matter that they want nothing to do with it, it’s their responsibility.

—You break it, you buy it?

—I was thinking more along the lines of “you make the mess, you clean it up,” but that will do too.