Текст книги "The Makers (СИ)"

Автор книги: Minor Ursa

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And then he spread his hands and smiled confusedly.

Oh... what a mess you made, Aia, he thought, listening to the duty officer who was calling the police patrol unit, it doesn't matter at all if it would be one Unix less, there's not a soul other than you, which would be upset. If anybody could ever notice it.

21. 2330th year. Aia.

«What a mess you made,» said Lukasz at last.

"They could kill Benji," she said into the cool cupped hands, and looked up at him with her frightened eyes. "Is nothing can be done now?"

"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.

"Well... I dunno. As for me, the difference is not very big. Or rather, it's too great. Do you know what they like? "

"Who are they?" Benji didn't understand.

"Women, who else? They love emotions. They can't live without emotions."

"mi ba'e ji'a nelci loi za'u se cinmo*," Benji leaned over to the very face of the sergeant, winked at him and, screwing up his eyes, sensuously recited:

"Your evening's crumpled; it is here a third;

your heart is rushing in your chest like bird.

I'm here, I'm behind this foolish wall,

and I can't sleep without you at all."

«Eh...» the sergeant sighed and pressed «on» on the screen of the smartphone. «Well, do what you wish, guy...»

«It's Limerick, sergeant,» the smartphone responded. «They found the downed aircraft. Two hours ago the Besancon cops towed it to the parking lot. The cabin is clean: no hair, no blood, so the PCR test for now is off.»

"And how are you now? How's our Smith-O'Brien Avenue?"

"It's a funny place, sergeant. The concrete box, crammed with wires and equipment. Sure, there are no more people, but we pretty much rummaged around and did come up with some stuff."

"Well then, what are you waiting for?" the sergeant nodded and disconnected.

«Uh... eh...» Benji hesitated. «So what about me?»

"What about you?" the sergeant shrugged. "You have no money, you have no metric data, no genetic profile, like any normal person has. Your French will arrive for you. And when they'll arrive, they'll decide what to do with you.

The French had arrived in the morning, with some tricky electronic device and identification codes of the DII family. Benji – in good spirits and tightly charged – dutifully held out his hands and waited patiently until people make sure that he is he. Then there was a French consulate in Dublin, an interview with local television and the doing of a new chip.

And later in the evening the android was left on his own.

The first thing he did was to call Aia:

"di'ai calom to'o la dublin doi nixli*"

"Damn you, Benji," the black screen answered in Aia's voice. "You scared me so much."

"Sorry." Benji tapped the settings buttons, but the screen remained black. "What's the deal with your image?"

"Everything is fine with the image, worse with the face," there was a sigh on the other side, and the tear-stained girl's face appeared on the screen.

"You've been crying," Benji said. "Because of me. I hurt you, don't I?"

"Now everything is fine."

"I never meant to hurt you. Sorry."

"What are you talking about, Benji," Aia said gently, and her look melted slightly. "Why don't you take responsibility for the Gobi Desert – there is too dry there. Or for Antarctica – there is there too cold."

"Well, if you think it's really necessary..." Benji smiled. "I just want to note that in this situation, I'll immediately go into the category of irresponsible."

"It's possible," Aia nodded. "But don't worry: I can comfort you with the fact that in natural conditions in the wild nature responsibility doesn't grow at all."

"Yes, in natural conditions in the wild nature in this niche lives completely different ugliness," the android agreed and paused, softly looking at Aia's green eyes.

He was looking and thinking he could no longer honestly to say to himself that he didn't care.

And then Aia had tears in her eyes again and she turned off.

«I love you,» Benji declared and smiled foolishly at the empty screen, knowing that Aia still hears him, because she needs neither any optics, nor the closed electrical circuits, nor the radio channels to hear.

He stood for a while, looking at his reflection in the black rectangle of the screen, and then, still foolishly smiling, turned and walked towards the terminal in order to rent another car: it was necessary to unblock bank codes and return home, to Orly.

This time everything worked out: the bank, who had learned about what was happening, met him with the new package of codes and new caproplast surrogate, and the road was so light that when Benji came back home, he couldn't restrain himself and while landing in Orly boyishly fulfilled a delightfully perfect arc.

An emergency call awaited him in the dispatch room.

_________________________

mi ba'e ji'a nelci loi za'u se cinmo* – I like emotions too. (Lojban)

di'ai calom to'o la Dublin doi nixli po'e mi* – Hello from Dublin, my girl. (Lojban)

23. 2330th year. Alpha.

For the first time in the last couple of hundred years, Alpha has been experiencing such a troubled period: the Earth (for some of the inhabitants of Alpha it was almost forgotten, and for others – completely alien) by the decision of the General Assembly and by the recommendation of the UN Security Council, waited for representatives of the community of Makers. And the Makers long accustomed to not look at anyone and not depend on anyone, suddenly got unexpected complications – money.

Accepted on the Earth payment systems didn't work in Alpha. Any. Just because no one needed them.

Food, clothing, housing – all this was for everyone as natural as breathing or a heartbeating: nobody cared about the financial and economic system of the Earth. If anything could be considered the "cash flow" on Alpha, then only a flow of mutual sensitivity, caring and interest.

The Earth could not offer anything like that.

However, the challenge was not only this. The challenge was also that it was impossible to offer such a thing to the Earth: unlike the Makers, each of which was an integral self-sufficient being, the earthlings represented a single incredibly complex composite entity, in which the main regulatory environment was money.

***

Lukasz Lansky who was the first of the first turned to be the first secretary of the Alpha diplomatic mission on Earth, as well as the senior adviser, diplomat and the head of the Makers's embassy. It happened after a brief discussion, followed by snort of derision and great laughter. As an attaché, and also as a conditional sign, meaning that Alpha has a human features too, Aia's parents and her brother were sent to Earth with Lukasz..

The agrément was requested and duly received.

The honor to accept and (in order to avoid possible misunderstandings) at first to create financial security of the newly appeared diplomatic representation was fell upon the Czech Republic, the cradle of Makers.

Matt was the only one out of this diplomatic mission who was really happy about the upcoming trip; he had three good reasons for this. First, he has never been to the Earth. Secondly, he wasn't a Maker. And thirdly, he was only the ordinary little boy.

Aia had been telling him a lot about the Earth from what she remembered. He heard a lot about the sky, the rainbows, the mountains, the rivers and oceans, the changing of seasons in the temperate zone, the skyscrapers, the autobahns, the malls, the schools and the universities – and the boy's imagination pleasantly pictured in his mind's eye an air racks filled with cars, which looked exactly like the orbital shuttles, and a smiling, sluggish, multi-layered, pyramidal concrete giants, inside of which lived not wizards-Makers, but ordinary people. People are the same as he, Matt.

When in the old metal building of the maternal station began to ring the call signal from the airlock, Matt and Aia were just sitting on the cool metal steps.

"Benji, Benji!" a few minutes later, melted with delight Matt, almost forcibly dragging the poor android from the airlock chamber. "Tell me: is it true that this time you'll take me with you?"

"It's true."

"Is it true that the houses on the Earth are so large that a thousand people can live in them at the same time?"

"It's true."

"Is it true that there are so many people on the Earth that if they will fly to our Alpha in turn, everyone will be able to visit here only once a hundred thousand years?"

"Who told you so stupid thing?" genuinely surprised Benji and glanced at Aia. "People don't live there that much."

Aia hugged the android with one hand, while the second her hand gently ran over his broken face; and plastic and metal has stuck together and aligned under her thin fingers as obedient, as raw clay.

«What?» she shrugged. «It's his idea.»

"I'll take them to Ruzyne," Benji said, embracing Aia in response. "I'm sorry."

"There is no need to be sorry. Prague is a good city. They'll be there alright. Is it true, Matt?"

"It's true," the boy agreed hurriedly. "We'll be alright there."

Benji had been preparing to the tragedy from the very moment of the call, but that didn't happen, – either because there was no any tragedy, or because the world of Makers meant completely different miseries, and Benji was floating in it like a complete fool, worse than in human sympathies and preferences.

Things were packed up, the goals are clear, the tasks are set, and the actors are balanced and calm. At least, from the outside it looked just like that.

Matt ran away to pack his bags, leaving Aia and Benji together. Both of them sat on the grass right there, by the hatch, leaning back against its thick transparent cover.

They sat like some kind of weird couple of angels guarding the hermetically sealed entrance to heaven.

«You know, sometimes it seems to me that they simply didn't finish with me.»

Benji waved his hand somewhere toward the weightless space, where, from the outside of Alpha, the shuttle was hanging like a large metal wart, which still didn't belong to him, and in his intonation slipped the fatigue unnatural for any sort of machine.

"It seems to me that somewhere deep inside of me there is some kind of stupid incompatibility of my software and the world around me."

"Don't be absurd, Benji. The world around us has perfect compatibility with everything in the world. And you'll never be an exception, no matter how much you want it."

"But I don't want to be an exception," the android said. "The problem is different. The problem is that at times I don't want to be at all. I don't want to start from background mode. And, worst of all, I don't want the background mode as well. It seems to me wrong. I think it's some sort of system error."

"Of course, it's an error," agreed Aia. "Only it's yours, not those who did you. The error is to think that if you leave, something will change for the better in this world."

Benji looked up at her silently.

«Stop it, Benji. No one of us is to blame for the fact that the world is as it is.»

"I don't blame anyone." He reached out and covered Aia's palm with his silvery palm. "It's just recently that it strangely struck me to watch myself: you are too crucial for me, and I'm not sure that it's right."

"It's hard to surprise the one who knows everything in advance," Aia chuckled bitterly. "I know more: I also know that you are not sure about the opposite."

Yes, nodded android, not sure.

«Do you want a piece of advice?»

Yes, he nodded.

«I think that such a layout – what is right and what is wrong – matters only in the context of goal-setting. Let's say you need to get from Paris to Stuttgart. If you took off and took to the east, you are approaching the goal, and, therefore, did the right thing. If the other way...»

"Mm-hmm... I got it," Benji nodded. "If at first sudo rm-rf, and then defragmentation, it's not very correct. Although..."

He suddenly reached for Aia's shoulders, gently turned her toward his face and kissed her so humanly as he could, whispering to the girl's little ear:

"Although in the reverse order, in my opinion, it's also wrong."

"Benji!" Aia gasped.

"I knew you'd like it."

24. 2330th year. The Earth.

In August, Matt caught a cold for the first time in his life.

By that time it had been exactly two weeks since Benji left four of them in Prague's Ruzyne.

For these two weeks, Matt has already relatively used to living on the Earth. He managed to get used to the fact that the houses and their inhabitants aren't quite as he imagined. He managed to get used to the skyscrapers, to people, to the wind, to the strong smell of flowers in the Prokop valley, to the sky – the blue, then the orange, in which the inexhaustible rivers of aircars were constantly flowing, and to the clouds crossing the sky.

The adults – Lukasz and parents of Matt – all this time, almost never stayed at home, constantly went to somewhere: the meetings, negotiations, seminars, congresses, conferences, and on those rare days when they were at home after all, the house was full of strangers.

Matt occasionally was messed around them as a little useless toy – he was not concerned with the international law, politics, and ideology. All of its "diplomatic" functions had been focused on being visible to others and watching others.

On that morning the birds sang like crazy: opposite the window, on a thin poplar branch, in the bright colors of the August dawn, the young sparrows chirped – hungry and hollow.

Matt opened his eyes and immediately shut them again: the sun that flooded his small bedroom was so bright that it hurt to look.

For about five minutes he lay thus, delighted by the chattering of birds and the noise of a big city, until he remembered that in this evening their family has to pass another foolish reception.

Over the past fortnight he was bored with all these receptions – in the daytime, in the evening, the seating chart and without seating chart, with the possibility of making contacts or without it, solemn and not so much, strengthening and expanding the connections, influencing the local authorities. Bored stiff.

By and large he didn't care about the generally accepted rules and protocol formalities that had fallen on him, it was a strange life, not interesting at all. He didn't want it. He would prefer to meet the dawns, listen to the wind and look at the stars.

This desire was so sharp that he even jumped from his bed. He jumped, rushed to the dressing room, found there what he thought was the least stuffed with electronics, fast dressed, and get out into the courtyard.

The courtyard was green and deserted.

Imagining himself invisible, the boy had crept past the guards, rounded the embassy building, crossed a small square, climbed over the wrought-iron embassy fence and found himself on the street.

The street was already crowded, but this fact didn't upset him at all: still pretending to be invisible, he has ran along the embassy fence to where the city subway train slowly dragged itself along the tall filigree viaduct.

The subway platform turned to be high above the sidewalk.

The transparent elevator, lifting the passengers to the platform, has greeted Matt affably and took him to the crowd.

Then, through the window of the train, where the boy was sitting, he could see how the sky, vast and fearsome, burdened with dark rain clouds, slowly approaches, from west to east.

By the time he left the subway in the forest park surrounding Ruzyne, the sun had disappeared and it started to rain.

Matt was not at all afraid of the rain: there, on Alpha, he froze and soaked to the skin a bunch of times.

Partly for this reason, he looked back at the train go awaying to the west, beyond the spaceport, and went along the path, strewn with a fine gravel, to where the unknown was hidden under the curtain of the closing tree canopy.

For a long time, the rain, drizzling there, outside, didn't make itself felt at all, so thick was the interlacing of branches over Matt's head.

Matt walked and thought about himself, about Aia, about Alpha, about the Earth and didn't notice how the morning drowned in a dark thunderous twilight, and the park became quiet and gloomy.

When struck the first lightning, it was already so dark that the trees caught by the flash, for the first time started to seem to the boy as gloomy giants bending over the path. Under the deafening «AGRHHH!» he, who had never seen or heard anything like that, have come up from an untimely reflection and dropped down with fear.

And then it rumbled again and again.

Matt's parents discovered their loss only an hour and a half later; by this time Prague had long already been covered by a storm front and the rain poured on the streets like mad.

"My God!" the mother lamented. "He's just a little seven-year-old boy!"

"He is no longer a baby," the father reassured her. "He is sitting somewhere nearby, waiting until the storm passes."

"I'm just worried"

"All people are worried from time to time, there is nothing catastrophic in this. Tell Lukasz or Aia."

Lukasz closed his eyes and saw Matt sitting under the branching old linden-tree in the Zlichinsky Forest Park. High above him rumbled and thundered the sky, heavy with gray clouds. The rain was so heavy that it poured down through the thick green canopy, and along the paths streamed the real brooks. The boy, scared and drenched to the bone, was sitting with his back to the wet, rough linden trunk.

«Hey! Matt!» Lukasz called to him.

"Hey! Matt!" whispered the linden tree.

"Oh!" Matt winced with surprise. "Who are you?"

"Friend," the tree answered, folding the branches over boy's head with the slope of a dense green roof.

From somewhere on top of its branches a wet ouzel had flew up, shook itself and, tilting his black head, stared at the boy with its small dark bead.

«How can you be my friend if you don't know anything about me?» Matt smiled lightly at him.

"Nobody knows about anyone, and it doesn't bother anyone," the ouzel pointed out and tilted its head to the other side. "Are you cold?"

"A little," Matt said.

"It will be warmer now," the ouzel once more shook itself, jumped to the very end of the twig and looked anxiously out from under the foliage, as if waiting for something from the rain pouring outside. As if in response somewhere high above, once again, a dull rumble passed, didn't struck, but rustled, and around the linden tree, under which Matt sat, a white sparkling weaving appeared from the wet air.

«All right, just don't touch it,» the ouzel warned, again bouncing closer to the boy.

"What don't to touch?" Matt was surprised.

"Lightning, what else."

"All right," the boy nodded, feeling that the earth on which he was sitting is getting warmer and warmer.

"You'd better tell me why you ran away from home."

"I?" Matt asked. "I didn't run away. I wanted to change the future."

"Whose?" the ouzel, in turn, was surprised.

"My, of course."

"Oh, you are a little egoist," the bird shook her head. "It seems to me it's a common trait in your family. Do you know that you cannot change your future without changing someone else's?"

"Why not?"

"Because the future is always shared. What's fault of the next evening?"

"I don't like looking at other people's feet," Matt said grimly. "They are not interesting. And I don't like looking at jackets or gowns. And I don't catch a faces, because I'm small. And many things cannot be done when visitors come, because they can misunderstand it. No, rather, they cannot understand it."

The ouzel bounced on the same place, whistled and quite humanly grinned:

"Do you ever try to sit a little bit higher?" and, looking at the boy who had opened his mouth from surprise, winked at him: "Come on, today we will slightly change the usual course of things."

Matt appeared at home almost immediately after the thunderstorm – wet, excited, happy, almost in daring, with a small black ouzel sitting on his shoulder.

Lukasz waited for him in the embassy yard, cross-legged and leaned back on the back of a wrought-iron bench:

"Well, traveler, do you know what an ouzels are being fed?"

"There're those who live in cages and they are being fed," the boy retorted. "And I'm not holding anyone by force."

Then there was a drink reception, and for the first time it didn't seem to be depressing to Matt. He walked between the buttoned all the way up guests and with a charming smile gave each of them a living crystal flower. The guests were crouching down to meet and shake hands with the boy, and the flowers were stirring their transparent heads and rang.

And at night Matt spiked a fever.

25. 2330th year. Aia.

Aia wouldn't remember that she ever cried the way she was crying today, sitting under a dome in a transparent glassium tunnel at the quiet generator Bibich: out loud, sobbing, with every breath, repeating «I can't bear it anymore!»

However, it didn't last long, and after half an hour after the fit of hysteria, what had tormented her became so unsteady and blurry that if someone asked her about the reason for that that had just happened, she would hardly give any intelligible answer.

What "I can't"? Why "I can't"?

After crying, she sat for a long time in silence, listening to what was happening inside her.

Usually if she was filled with despair, it happened in dreams, but when she was conscious and oriented – on the contrary – there was always a relief.

All of it was unexpected – and this not yet melted sensation of what was happening, and this bottomless hole, in which her heart was loudly crushing.

She understood that the fate of the Maker is not the worst fate: to foresee the future, to look into the past – well than, how can you be upset by having an eyes or ears?

However, it turned out that it was possible. There was a kind of thin border that she was afraid to define for even herself.

There, beyond this border, the grass was also green, the water was also wet, and the blood pounded in the veins at about the same rhythm, but the creature hidden in the depths of her soul revealed some unthinkable eyes and saw behind it the eternal abyss.

She knew that this abyss was neither terrible nor strange.

Strange were her feelings: one day they could be dull to the point of extinction, the next they could burn Aia from the inside, just like in the fit that had overwhelmed her half an hour ago.

At such times she felt that this burning, deep and nameless feeling she experienced was the only right one, for which in life it was worth doing something at all.

Of course, she also realized that it wasn't so. Of course, she knew that it was as ridiculous and as wrong as be trying to draw with all colors at the same time: every note in this universal fugue, like every brushstroke in the picture – from barely visible to intertwining dense, saturated, colorful – should have its own, special, timbre and its own, special, loudness. However, what rolled on her, covered her with such force that this tune got lost and trembled, like a swarm of moths at the time of the tornado.

This feeling wasn't hopeless at all, at least because Aia wasn't an ordinary person.

Of course, she inherited from people so much: she also had to eat and breathe, she also needed love and understanding, and the love and understanding she lacked were exactly the same utopian, and get them was also unrealistic, but there was a huge difference. The seeds of Benji's love were planted on fertile soil of her own love and her own understanding.

She saw the future – and her, and Benji's. She saw it as clearly as she saw, for example, droplets of moisture on the glassium pane or her hand getting around her knees, and this future was inevitable.

It turned out that her «I can't bear it anymore» meant that the future struggled to be realized in the very this way .

Aia sighed and, under the rustle of the wind tickling between her wingless shoulders, slid down into the hole, like a little tin-soldier.

26. 233the year. Benji.

As a machine, Benji could well afford not to waste a time.

"Ding-ding-ding", tinkling inside him, caught him in the process of transforming idle cash into a loan capital. He still didn't have a little more than fifteen million euros to buy the shuttle.