The Makers
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Now, with the arrival of the guests, the situation has taken on a slightly different character, a different scale, and now it turned out that Alpha was watching aliens "bird" in much the same way as some village silly billy is watching the lost neighbor's rooster.
Robert watched that what was happening on the Moon from the hill at the Valley, - he sat cross-legged with his eyes closed.
He saw that they were standing there, inside their ship, as a solid wall along the real wall - nothing but eyes and ears, that their thin yellow fingers trembled and waved like the flowers of a hawkweed in a strong wind and that the air around them was filled with the smells of pine sap, love and life.
Robert felt this as clearly as he would feel, standing with them side by side, shoulder to shoulder.
He saw Aia was touching the white metal plane, he saw her hand, gloved with the bellows expansion joints, was sinking in this dazzling whiteness, he saw Benji who can't to be frightened and the twins-telepaths were frightening at the same time, and Lukasz was grinning sadly and lonely, almost as Mephistopheles.
Robert saw the aliens were reaching out to Aia, probing a strange metabolism, the already high level of oxygen was rising in her spacesuit, the thin yellow fingers are touching gloves passing through the metal and the white sparkles were dancing at the tips of these fingers depicting the surrounding constellations.
Hah, he thought, looking at what makes oxygen with Aia's head, here you are, dull humanity, like hell you will, come on, girl, give them a show, here they are, the novice patients of our clinic, teach them to smile, and they will smile at everyone...
And the girl started.
She turned her shining face toward Benji, took his hand, and stepped inside white wall with him, as if this wall were not of metal, but of milk.
Already there, inside, she opened her helmet, smiled confidently at the yellow pupil race - the same way as the educator smiled at the infants - and started to sing:
"Here, just above a heaven and below your shining heart, splashed over sky eleven not a world but only part..."
"a'o do gasnu lo co'e tezu'e da*," whispered Benji either to himself or to Aia who was drunk with oxygen, and also opened the helmet.
And then the aliens fell silent.
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a'o do gasnu lo co'e tezu'e da* - I hope you know what you"re doing. (Lojban)
32. 2330th year. Benji.
Benji stood next to Aia, slowly looking around, listening to the sudden silence, and waited, not knowing what: whether the continuation of Aia's performance or it would stop.
"Keep cool, Benji," Aia said in the thick silence. "It's just a good excuse to find out where begins the sympathy."
As if in response to her words, the yellow convocation had been hesitated a little and parted, and in the formed aisle the android saw a little blond human boy.
"Sympathy begins with coincidence," the boy said, watching Aia's face getting pale. "Oh, please, only without drama. But I suspect this is the area in which to find coincidence would be the easiest."
"All right," agreed Aia in a low voice. "Meet Danek, Benji."
"I'm glad to be part of your memories too," the boy said.
He stepped forward and stopped right in front of the android, looking up at him from below. He looked so humanly, moreover, he looked a so much lot like Aia, and Benji would not be surprised to find out that the child indeed has Aia's genes.
Benji has never specifically been interested in negotiating as an instrument of diplomacy, but recent experience in analyzing human relations has allowed him to assume that the strongest player on the other side is now this boy.
So the android closely and silently looked at the aliens behind the boy, smiled and sat down in front of him on the floor to equalize the difference in growth.
The boy also sat down on the floor and patted with his palm next to him:
"Mom?"
Good heavens, Aia thought settling down between them as a broken little animal, who would have thought that in order to match, one must necessarily fall.
For a moment she thought she is asleep and seeing a nightmare, and this thought gave her strength.
"It's good that you feel better," the child placed with satisfaction his hands on his knees and turned to Benji. "Tell me, what's it like when a machine loves a human?"
"What?" gasped Benji.
"Oh..." the boy froze, looking in embarrassment at the android. "You may not want to talk, but you can't hide your thoughts, I should have warned you."
Benji looked at Aia, then at the creatures behind her.
"You know, Aia," he said, "this time you chose a very funny way to hear from me about love."
Aia opened her mouth, but Danek placed a small palm on the glove of her spacesuit:
"She didn't, we did. Look at this from the other side: we are all here now to tell the truth to each other. And one truth is not worse than the other. Aia can do what she want with what you say, but I want you to speak not so much for her, as for us."
"Sometimes it seems to me that the easiest way to drive a machine crazy is to leave it alone with a human," if Benji could, he would sigh. "No, even better - with humanity. And saves us, machines, only the absence of all this stuff providing emotions. I think," he went on, "the love of the machine differs from the love of a human in that in the case of a machine it's always a conscious act of will, and in the case of a human - it's often just a hysterical reaction. A hysterical reaction is always bad, conscious act of will is always good."