—You were unemployed for over a year at the time of the massacre, yet your lifestyle never suffered.
—Is that wh … what bothers you? I was supposed to be a geneticist. There was no research anymore. People weren’t getting paid. I was tired of seeing m-m-mutilated people die in front of me, so I quit the hospital. My parents had ju … just died. They left me some money.
—Then I suppose I will have to be content watching you be tried in the United States. It says here you had a layover in New York, on your way to Puerto Rico. Why were you going back there?
—Nothing that concerns you.
—I realize we do not know each other very well, but you must understand that you will eventually tell me all that I want to know. Why not save yourself the added discomfort?
—Now who’s talking about torture? What are you so ang … angry for?
—We both know what you did. If you do not remember, I am certain you will be reminded many times during your trial.
—I only did what needed to be done. Someone had to, even if you didn’t have the sss … stomach for it.
—Removing ova from Ms. Resnik against her will is something that had to be done?
—It would have been better if she had volunteered, but she didn’t.
— …
—Yes … It had to be done!
—It did not have to be done there and then. You could have waited until she volunteered, or until the circumstances called for more extreme measures.
—No! I couldn’t have! You can’t wait. You can’t worry about other people’s feelings. You can’t com … compromise, hope for the best. Or people die.
—You seem agitated all of a sudden.
—Have you ever seen a village being raided?
—I have not.
—Me neither. Bu … but my father told me. I was still in Sarajevo when the siege began. The whole country went c … crazy. Everybody fought everybody. The Serbs fought the Croats. Everyone f … fought the Muslims. Villages were being raided all the time. Then one day, they came into our village.
—Who did? Serbs?
—It doesn’t matter. Bosniaks and Croats killed plenty of people too, but yes, they were VRS. Do you know how many men it takes to terrorize a town of ten thousand people?
—Fewer than one would think.
—You can probably do it with fifty men. There were a lot more that day. Two hundred VRS soldiers raided my town while I was away. We had all heard of the atrocities. People knew what the VRS did. The villagers weren’t defenseless. They had weapons, p … plenty of them. People could have fought back. Ten thousand against two hundred. They would have been overwhelmed in minutes. But they didn’t. The town leaders called for everyone to remain calm, stay in their home. Don’t p … provoke them! Don’t make things worse! They thought offering no resistance would make things easier.
—Did it?
—Maybe it did. They only killed twenty-seven people that day.
Two hundred men … Fffewer than that, because a dozen of them were taking turns raping my … raping my sister to death. They made my parents watch, then they killed my mother, let my father live … because he was a Serb. They raped and killed a whole lot of people that day. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred men left on the street, in the whole town. No one did anything. No one tried. Everyone just … hoped for the best. My father killed himself a week later.
That’s what happens if you don’t do what needs to be done. Vincent and Kara were in their midtwenties. That meant they could be eff … efficient for another t … twenty years at best. They could have died. They could have got … gotten sick. I thought there was a good chance their children could operate the robot, but it would take years to find out …
—You do realize there are … other ways for people to have children? Did you ever wonder why I would encourage two people in a military unit to pursue a relationship?
—I don’t think that’s why you did it. I think you liked them. Maybe you thought it would make them work better together.
—If I have, in any way, willingly or not, led you to believe I was remotely interested in your opinion of me, it was my mistake. It will not happen again.
—It doesn’t matter why you did it. I was also hoping their children, in the tr … traditional sense, could pilot the robot. It would be the best-case scenario. Make a dozen babies, each of them could operate either station. But their ch … children would only have half of each parent’s ge … genes, maybe not the good half. It might not work. I couldn’t wait and see. I had to try cloning them too. I had to see if I could splice animal genes into theirs so their legs could bend the right way.
—You are mad.
—Am I? What would you have done if they had children? Cut open one of their kids and remove all of his leg bones so his knees would bend backwards? Now that would be cruel. I don’t think they would have volunteered for that. You just didn’t think … think this through. At least my plan didn’t involve mmm … mutilating anyone.