The Makers

"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.

________________________________

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."

"Hm...," Aia grinned with one side of her lips, turned her gloved hand, the one on which Danek's hand was lying, so that the child's hand was atop, and gently covered it with the second gloved hand. "Maybe it's not politically consciously, but, in my opinion, it's time to run away from here until the nurses arrived."

"It's Luna, there are no nurses," Benji remarked to her. "And furthermore, there, outside, the key human delegation is still stampeding all over the scene. I think to run away from here is not only politically unconsciously, but also not educationally."

He got to his feet, and the tight ring of alien team staggered back.

The creature nearest to him stretched out his hand and opened his fist, showing the object lying on its palm - a small copy of the white bird-like spaceship.

"Take it," Danek said.

He followed Benji, stood up and turned to Aia:

"Do you know what my second thought was? How so many stars fit in the sky..."

"And the first?" innocently asked Benji, taking the gift.

The boy looked at Aia, and she sighed in response, closed the helmet and said already inside the suit, over the radio:

"And the first was that it's also not politically consciously to organize here a love show. It's immoral."

When through the white wall appeared at first one, and then - tightly holding the first one by its gloved hand - and the second spacesuit, no one was already stunned and didn't bulge out their eyes, - even the twins have suddenly acquired the lost ability to speak.

"It's outrageous!" blurted out one of them. "Damn you and your entertainment! Do you want to mess up the contact?"

"He's right. If something extraordinary happened, these lads from Global News," the second twin nodded at the television crew offloading from the Condor, "will spin everything so that you'll turn out to be a shark breaking into a cage with scuba divers, whoever these frogmen may be."

"Are you afraid to put your finger where you want to put your hand?" Aia said. She let go off Benji's hand and turned to the fuss at Condor. "Come on. These lads from Global News will soon be tired of reporting about the personal lives of the Makers. And what are they going to report about? There is no entrance in this galleon."