Only Human (Themis Files #3)(80)

—Oh, well, if he was wrong. Sorry I even mentioned it. There I was thinking we risked total annihilation.

—Think about it, Vincent. They killed a few million of us, and that sent their world into a civil war. Their people—half of them anyway—see us as … I don’t know … cousins. We’re related to them. What do you think would happen if they killed all of us? Anyway, they didn’t.

—You didn’t care.

—I thought it was worth … Look. We needed help. We … It was their mistake. We couldn’t fix this. We don’t have what it takes. We just don’t. They could do it. They could make things right.

—By force?

—I try to convince myself it’s something else. Supervision? We’re children, Vincent. We’re all children. We were thrown into a grown-up world before our time. I thought … I thought we needed some adults to show us right from wrong.

—Yeah, that makes sense, maybe. It sounded a bit like bullshit when you said it, though.

—What do you want me to say, Vincent? That I believe in the human spirit? In our innate ability to face even the most insurmountable odds? I wish that were true, Vincent. I wish.

—We could have done more.

—Who? You and I? Eva? We’re not superheroes, Vincent. We got lucky a few times, but we can’t control the entire world. You thought you could help with Themis. Eva thought the same thing. Where did that get us? We had two of these insanely powerful weapons on Earth, and you and your daughter were each in control of one of them. What did you do? You pounded each other to the brink of death. We’re not … We’re not heroes. No one is. Every movie we watch, every book we read, we see people who can solve every problem, face every danger all on their own. But in real life, Vincent, we just call the cops. That’s what I did.

—I don’t know, Rose, I—

—They were executing people!

—It’s not the first time. Probably not the last.

—It’s the first time we did it everywhere. It’s the first time there isn’t anyone to say: Hey! Stop this. This is wrong. We’ve lost our collective mind. If that had happened to me, you’d have appointed a guardian. If I had gone insane, put my own life in danger, you— —Stop. Stop. I understand why you did it, Rose. I’m not sure I agree, but I understand. What I don’t get is how you got the Ekt to agree. They … This goes against everything they believe in. You just said, their world was sent into chaos the last time they came here, and now they’re … We just surrendered to them, Rose! The whole planet surrendered to them! Interference doesn’t even begin to … From what I know of them, the Ekt would want absolutely no part in this. They’d want the opposite of this.

—You’re right. They wouldn’t have come. They wouldn’t have considered it. We had to give them something. How did he put it? We had to offer them something they wanted more.

—And what’s that?

—What they came for the last time they were here.





FILE NO. 2202


INTERVIEW BETWEEN DR. ROSE FRANKLIN AND MR. BURNS


Location: United Nations Headquarters, New York, New York


—Are you sure you want to go through with this?

—Dr. Franklin, I’m a man of my word. Besides, I’m not sure they’d take no for an answer after coming all this way. There are so many of them! That message of yours must really have made an impression.

—They’ll execute you right away, you know that? You and all your people.

—Well, not right away. It will seem like right away, but it’ll take a good ten days to get back there. Technically, we have a few days to live.

—I don’t want you to die for us. I don’t want you to die period.

—I hope so! That’s a horrible thing to wish on someone! I don’t particularly want to die either, to be perfectly honest.

—Then don’t do it.

—Dr. Franklin, there are nearly two thousand people in the hangar behind us. I’m sure none of them are eager to meet their maker, but all of them chose to come because they thought it was the right thing to do. A lot of them were locked up in camps waiting to be executed, they didn’t take much convincing. For over three thousand years, our entire lives were spent making sure no one knew we existed. When that changed, and millions of people died, most of us had a hard time dealing with the responsibility. For many, this is some kind of relief, knowing that no one will suffer because of us anymore.

—No one suffered because of you. You’ve never done anything wrong.

—Sins of the father, Dr. Franklin.

—Somehow, you don’t strike me as the biblical type.

—Oh, I love the Bible! So many stories in there. Do you know the one about Balaam and the talking donkey? There’s one about two bears shredding forty-two kids to pieces because one of them called someone “baldy.”

— …

—Does it help if I tell you it doesn’t hurt at all? I mean, I’ve never been there, and, who knows, they might have gone all medieval since then, but I was told that back in the day, they vaporized people with an energy beam. As far as I know, that’s painless. You would know! Did it hurt when you died?

—I didn’t die. The other Rose Franklin did.