—What about you?
—Me?
—Russia. I may not ask a lot of questions, but I was listening last night when you told us we landed in Estonia.
—And?
—And, we’re here. I take it Estonia isn’t as sovereign as it used to be.
—Oh, that. Yes, Estonia is now a proud member of the Russian Federation. So is Georgia, and pretty much all the -stans. To be fair, about half of them asked for it.
—And the other half?
—Do you drink soda?
—What?
—Pop! Soda!
—I—
—Imagine Coke is taking over everything, buying every brand they can get their hands on, and Pepsi is the only thing they can’t afford. Now, maybe you like Dr Pepper and you wanna keep drinking it, but you can’t. There is no Dr Pepper anymore. There’s Coke and Pepsi. Some people accept that, but for some it takes a little longer to sink in. Georgia, for example, they couldn’t let go of their Fanta.
—So you send in tanks, a hundred thousand men and have them take the Pepsi challenge with an AK-47 to their head. I don’t see how that makes you any different than the other guy.
—We’re protecting our borders. They’re taking over the world.
—What about the EDC?
—You’re funny. That lasted for about a week after Themis disappeared.
—There’s no United Nations anymore?
—No, there’s a UN. On paper at least. But that robot is All-American. Red, white, and blue through and through. And it’s not defending widows and orphans.
—And you want to do the same thing with Themis.
—I would like to even things out a bit, yes! I don’t see anything wrong with that. The only thing stopping them from beaming into the square across the street is the threat of a nuclear strike. Mutual assured destruction. Dun dun dun…The MAD doctrine is the only play we have left without that robot. You understand how that’s a bad thing, right? They know we don’t really want to push that button—because of that mutual part where everyone ends up extra crispy—so they keep backing us into a corner until we have nowhere to go, then boom. No Coke or Pepsi, just muddy radioactive water.
—You do realize there’s no way I’m ever gonna pilot Themis for you, right?
—Oh, Vincent, Vincent…Why do you do this to yourself?…I know you’ve seen the way the guards look at your daughter. Do you know how long she can hold her breath? Repeat after me. Exacto knife.
—Fuck you.
—Well, you kind of asked for it a little bit, don’t you think?
—I’ll—
—I know, I know. You’ll kill me if I hurt her. I don’t doubt for a minute that you mean it. Don’t worry. I was just messing with you. I would never hurt your daughter.
—How do I know you mean that?
—Because you know I don’t need to. I could give her a haircut, and you’d be in that robot asking for orders before I get to her bangs. Let’s talk about something else, OK? This is just depressing. Let’s do something constructive, like maybe saving your friend. To be honest, I’d much rather have him pilot Themis for us.
—What do you want me to do?
—That’s the right attitude! Thank you for asking. You see, our doctors, they won’t say it because they’re afraid of what’ll happen to them, but they have no idea how to save your friend right now—like none—and I’m thinking: Maybe he knows. Maybe he could save himself. Only he won’t talk to us. Either he can’t understand or he doesn’t want to, but I’m sure he’d like to talk to a friend.
—What makes you think I can talk to him?
—Really? Let me see. Hmmm, he was with you, inside Themis. It would make for a boring ride if he couldn’t talk to anyone…Oh, yes, you also spent NINE YEARS on his planet. Oh, and you’re a linguist. Like, that’s the one thing you actually trained for. What else? Hmmm. No. That’s it. That’s all I have.
—I meant what makes you think it’s even possible? They could communicate with something other than sound. They could use chemical reactions, pheromones, touch, telepathy, sign language. Even if they did use sounds, in order to communicate, you’d have to be able to make the sounds, and recognize them. They could have a very different articulatory system. They could have no larynx, two of them, something entirely different. Even with the same physiology, they could produce sounds we can’t replicate, or can’t hear. Some of their sounds could be ultrasounds to us. Some could be indistinguishable from one another. They could have a thousand different sounds where we only hear one. They could produce a dozen at the same time. There are so many ways this could not work. I can’t hear tone the right way in Mandarin, let alone reproduce it. I hear it backwards, up is down, down is up. That’s with humans. Imagine the odds on another planet with folks who walk like ostriches. Even with the sounds out of the way, what they express could be impossible for us to grasp. They might not use a logic similar to ours, they might not conceptualize things as we do.
—Wait, wait…How stupid of me! Duh! I completely forgot I asked Eva if she’d like to talk to him just before you came in. She’s with him right now. I’m such a scatterbrain. Seems I don’t need you to talk to him after all. But thank you so much for that little lesson just then. That was superinteresting. No, don’t make that face again! It really was! They seem close, Eva and Ekim. How long have they known each other? The whole nine years? Less than that?
—What difference does it make?
—Exactly! What’s the point in not telling me? I can just ask her, you know. I’d rather you tell me because the security protocols are a lot tighter with her, and I hate the paperwork. But it’s OK, you don’t have to. Do you know how many forms I have to fill out just to talk to her through a glass wall?
—I don’t understand. Why would things be any different with her? We all spent the same amount of time over there.
—I know! Right? I asked the same question when they put her inside that sealed room. Well, for starters, she has more alien DNA than just about anyone we’ve come across.
—That’s still just a tiny fraction of her genetics.
—Well, tiny fractions matter now. She’s an A5.
—What’s that mean?
—It means she’d have a real hard time getting a job. I’m an A1 and I can only make colonel. Most countries keep their A3s in camps. Anyway, that’s strike one. Your daughter, being more alien than most, also spent almost half her life on another planet. She was a baby for a few of the years she spent here, so, really, most of her life is over there. I’m gonna make a fool of myself again, but I’d be willing to bet that…she didn’t wanna leave! Yes? No? Anyway, strike two. Then, of course, there’s the whole dating an alien thing. You know, the same kind that killed one hundred million people here on Earth, the kind that destroyed Moscow.