The Makers

"They already killed him," Lukasz snapped. "And everything that could be done has already been done, but only now nobody cares. What's the good now to snivel and show your weakness. We'll wait for the guests."

The delegation arrived the next day at eleven in the morning by Greenwich. Two smiling, broad-shouldered twins of Scandinavian appearance and a silent pilot.

To meet them came the entire population of Alpha: everyone wanted to be involved.

"Hello," Lukasz smiled in a most charming way, opening the airlock.

"Well, and where is the guarantee that this won't happen again?" sadly sighed one of the twins, stepping over the boundary of the gravity. "How will do we know what form will take your intervention next time?"

"Let's leave unnecessary curtsying. All these protocol rules look now slightly old-fashioned. I think they couldn't give us guarantees of tomorrow, such guarantees in principle nobody could give," - the second twin waved off and, looking around with interest, added: "What a charming little place you have here."

"We are used to our way of life," Robert said.

"Then you won't be surprised if I say that we are also used to our own," the guest looked at him sadly. "And last night for two hundred people didn"t just the way of life has changed, they are now almost insane: the whole evening shift of the Munster NPP unexpectedly turned out to be in total darkness in the open field."

"And it was good that it was dark," said the second guest. "Because it's one thing to just sit for half an hour in the dark and it's quite another to watch the Makers work. The Earth wants to know why has happened that happened."

"Because we are scared of death, too," Aia said softly. "I was scared."

The two twins simultaneously flinched, exchanged glances with each other and turned to Aia:

"Is there any of you on the Earth whom we doesn't know about?"

"No," said Lukasz.

Yes, Aia thought, and the twins looked at them in bewilderment:

"Is this one of us?"

"It's an android," said Aia. She said it so simply, as if the Makers spent whole days only watching that no one of human could inadvertently offend one of the DII brothers.

"That is the third party. It's even more interesting."

Lukasz nodded to Robert, who at first grinned, then sighed, and then easily and casually, like a good friend, took both twins by the elbows and led them away from the assembled crowd and from the airlock - toward the embarrassed green houses nearby:

"Oh, what nonsense. There is nothing weirder than dividing what can"t be divided. We had been waiting for you not in order to blame you or, what is even more senselessly, to be blamed. Inhabitants of the Earth have for a long time not been pampering us with their attention. And we think that is wrong."

"You don't have enough attention?" one of the twins was surprised.

"We are upset by this disunity," Robert shrugged. "From such a mood along all these fifteen hundred kilometers separating us from you, there is smelled sticky, nasty fear.

"People are afraid of permissiveness."

"People are afraid of their own limitations."

"Maybe it so. But only this your colorful expression won't enhance their fearlessness."

"Fearlessness can't ever be enhanced from outsides," Robert remarked, gesturing to his house. "Come on, I'll show you how we live."

Robert's house, the oldest on Alpha, was the largest. Outwardly it was similar to a large, shaggy, grayed caterpillar; inside it was almost an ideal suite of small but cozy and comfortable rooms. Frightened by the sudden visit of strangers, smelling of cold and metal, it trembled, its sides were vibrating.

"I have a house which is a big coward, it has a hare's soul," smiled Robert, stepping in and waved his hand to the right, toward the warm and soft reddish space. "Here, closer to the kitchen and the warmth, the babies live. They are twins, but one of them is the future Maker, the second one is not. You saw them there by the airlock."

The second of the twins ducked and cautiously followed Robert.

"There are on the Earth no hard feelings about you," he sighed, glancing incredulously at the soft, elastic walls with the thick interspersed receptors. "They just once again remembered your existence. And what's interesting is this was done as totally as it just possible."

"Yes, the Earth sometimes sins by forgetting the important," agreed Robert. "But it doesn't matter at all. We exist, regardless of whether they remember about us or not."

He went to the place where the house was poured with warm orange colors, took out from the kitchen shelf a transparent glassware strung on a yellow feelers and filled it with bubbling blue liquid:

"Don't be afraid, gentlemen: it's quite edible."

The house finally found the courage to sigh and, waving softly, it spread wide, forming a large orange living room around the guests...

***

By the evening it was decided the following: the division which was cultivated for centuries has no any purpose, and, consequently, has no any sense. It's far from the first generation of earthlings who not only knew about the nuthouse in orbit, but also took its existence for granted. Henceforth the Makers at last should have begun to change their image of being insane.

22. 2330th year. Benji.

The police patrol unit arrived at the scene and found Benji sitting on the footboard of the stolen flyer.

"Oh shit!" the elderly sergeant cursed, looking at Benji's scratched face and broken sensors. "It's a cyber! For the first time I see that the machine got into a trouble... What happened to you, kid?"

And Benji, who did not find any untruth or familiarity in such a treatment, re-announced both coordinates.

"So it's all because of the woman?!" the sergeant sitting at the desk at the local police station unwittingly whistled. The police station densely smelled of plywood and fresh paint. The sergeant filled out the registration questionnaire.

"This is a fine kettle of fish, I must say."

"You could say that," agreed Benji.

"I've never heard a human have any affairs with a cyber. As well as a cyber with the human."

"She's not a human, she's a Maker," the android said.