—There are no sides. There are no good guys and bad guys here. Everyone is just trying to do the right thing. I’m trying to understand where they’re coming from.
—The right thing? Have you lost your goddamn mind? They’re killers, Rose. They kill people, by the million.
—So do we.
—And if we were holding four of them prisoner on Earth, they’d have every reason to be scared shitless. We would probably dissect them. I’m not saying we’re better than they are. I’m saying these aren’t the righteous evolved beings you make them out to be. They’re the dominant species on their world. They’re predators.
—You’re afraid of them because they are … well, alien. Europeans had these maps of North Africa at the times of the Crusades. They marked the regions where giants lived, where two-headed people could be found. People fear what they don’t know.
—Yeah, they do. People slaughter what they don’t know, they keep it in chains, they enslave it. I understand what you’re saying, believe me, Rose. I understand better than you do. This is what I’m afraid of. These people out there, they’re not alien. This is their home. We’re the aliens, Rose. We’re the two-headed monsters.
—I understand that the events of the last few days might indicate otherwise—
—Can you hear yourself? You’re talking like him, now.
—Just trying to be clear. But I truly believe that their intention, when they came to Earth, was not to slaughter millions of us. What do the military call it? A surgical strike. I think that’s what it was supposed to be. In a way, I think they came to Earth to help us.
—I don’t buy that for a goddamn second, but say you’re right. Does it change anything? No, it doesn’t. Not a goddamn thing. It’s not the intention that counts when it comes to genocide. They didn’t give us an ugly sweater for Christmas. They violently killed millions of us. You’re curious. I get that. But don’t lose sight of the facts. We know they’re killers because they killed millions. I don’t really give a damn if or why they wanted to do it. You want to study them, fine! Let’s bring one back with us. We’ll lock it in a cage and you can have a tea party with it every night if you want to. First order of business, though, is to get the hell out of here, get our butts back to Earth.
—How? Seriously, how do you propose to do that, General? Yes, I’m curious. Maybe my curiosity is skewing my judgment a bit. I’m willing to admit that. I want to know more about them. Now you might think that’s a bad idea, but I don’t see us having any other choice. We don’t know how we got here. We don’t know if Themis has the capacity to get back to Earth on her own, and even if she did, we wouldn’t know how. Besides, she’s disabled right now, and we don’t know how to fix that. It seems to me, and correct me if I’m wrong, that if we want to get our butts back to Earth, as you say, these people are gonna have to do it for us. I think the odds of that ever happening increase exponentially if we don’t treat them as enemies. We need to get on their good side. Whether you’re sincere about it doesn’t necessarily matter, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.
—And how do we go about that?
—You can start by not calling them “it.”
—You think they’re listening to us? Even if they did, this ain’t Star Trek. They can’t understand anything we’re saying.
—Do you want to ask them, just to be sure?
—I think I liked you more when you were on the verge of depression.
FILE NO. EE013—PERSONAL FILE FROM ESAT EKT
Interview between Opt Enatast and Vincent Couture
Location unknown
—Yincent! Yout yeyn enoy.
— …
—Yout.
—You. I got that one.
—Yeyn.
—Yeyn? I have no idea wh—Learn! You learn more! No! I don’t learn more! And you have to learn some consonants, my friend. This is nuts. We’re not doing this anymore, not until I see my friends. I’ve been here for … You’ve had me cooped up in this stupid room with no windows for days now. I’m starving. I hate that white stuff you keep bringing me. Is it tapioca? I stink. I think I’ve been peeing in the sink. I wanna see my friends!
—Yok yosk.
—What?
—Yok yosk.
—Now? Yok is now, I think. I can see them now?
—Yosk. Enow … epyus one.
—Now plus one what? One hour? One day? Do you mean tomorrow?
—How etut yout esay eton … oyow?
—What? How … you say? How do you say tomorrow! No. “How do you say” is with your words. “What does X mean” is with my words.
—What etos X enean etonoyow?
—You don’t say X, you put the word where X is. What does tomorrow mean? And that’s … That’s a very good question. The sun was up the whole time we were inside Themis. You probably don’t care about the planet’s rotation … Sleep. How do you say sleep? Like this. Not sure the hands under my cheek are helping. Eyes closed. Over there. In the bed. I sleep in the bed.
—Iksyokt.
—Iksyokt? This … eyes closed, is iskyokt?
—At.
—I can see my friends now, plus one iskyokt?
—At.
—Yes? Yes I can see them?
—At.
—Yessssss. Thank you!
—Iskyokt is eyes.
—What? No. These are my eyes. This, with my eyes closed, is sleep. Iskyokt means sleep. Now, plus one sleep is tomorrow.
—Yok yosk is etonoyow.
—Yes sir! Let me write this down. Yosk. Could mean something like after, maybe next. At this rate, you and I will be able to talk to toddlers everywhere in no time.
—Eyyots esat yok yosk.
—What did you just say? You sounded real serious all of a sudden. What’s happening tomorrow?
—Yout ekot etut Eteyat etonoyow.
—I … to Terra tomorrow. I go to Terra tomorrow?
—At.
—We’re going home?
—At At.
—YES! Thank you! Do you guys do hugs?
FILE NO. 2116 (CONTINUED)
INTERVIEW BETWEEN MAJOR KATHERINE LEBEDEV, RUSSIAN MAIN INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (GRU), AND VINCENT COUTURE
Location: GRU building, Saint Petersburg, Russia
—Who was this Opt guy? A language teacher or something?
—Enatast. He … He’s some sort of scholar. He can’t pronounce an l to save his life, but he’s good with the law. He was sent there by the Council, the government.
—To teach you how to speak.
—No. Well, yes. I think he was helping them figure out what to do with us. They had no idea.
—Like whether they should kill you or not?
—No! They didn’t know what to make of us. They figured out we’re related to them when they came here, but we’re still … We’re very different. They have laws that tell them how to deal with full-blown aliens, and laws that tell them how to deal with people that are part Ekt, but those were intended for people that were born there. They weren’t prepared for a whole planet full of hairy people with a tiny bit of Ekt in them.
—Hairy people?
—Yeah—well, you saw Ekim—they don’t have body hair.
—We don’t have a lot …
—We have enough, apparently. People stopped us on the street to look at our arms. Kids wanted to touch our eyebrows. We were like Wookiees to them.
—You’re making this up.
—I swear. It was like Chewbacca landed in New York.
—I don’t get it.
—What? Chewbacca?
—These people, these Ekt, they come here and they kill millions of us. Then they take you there and they just … what? Get you to learn their language. Feed you, clothe you, I suppose. For years. That doesn’t make sense to me. Were you prisoners the whole time?
—No! It’s complicated. They don’t … We were some sort of legal, more like a philosophical, hot potato to them. They debated, a lot. The way their government works, it’s … slow.
—So you didn’t spend nine years in a room with that Opt guy.
—No, but I did talk to him a lot. He’s a good person and for a long time, he was the only one I could really talk to on their planet.
—I thought you learned their language.
—It takes a while before you can carry a real conversation with people. Enatast could meet me halfway. With everyone else, I felt like a tourist in Cuba. Donde esta la playa?
—Did they have beaches?
—They have oceans, but we’ve never seen one. They had plenty of sand …