The Makers (СИ)

"What a scale!" Benji couldn't resist. "What a scope! Impressive..."

"Of course, it's just for show," agreed Aia. "And from the inside it's not interesting and even disgusting, but if it contains a perspective, then there appears a completely different taste. And then there's symbolism, participation in the great and all that..."

"Don't forget, whose services you use while taking a shower or heading to the Sea of Rains, pani," one of the twins looked reproachfully at her. "Life of those people who seems foolish to you may not be as interesting as yours, but they do it as selflessly as you. Welcome," and he waved his hand towards the ladder leading into the cargo hold.

The moon was surprisingly crowded.

At least, it was exactly the way as looked the Carlini base that had accepted the "Condor". The people who met their small mixed delegation were all dressed in civilian clothes, but by the look of their eyes and their shaved square heads anyone could say that they comes from a long line of military service.

Aia in comparison and looked, and felt like a butterfly among hippos.

"Well, well, and where is this fruit of our friends' inspiration?" looked around one of the twins.

"It's at the east door, sir. This way, sir.".

There were no lectures on the use of equipment there - either because there were no newcomers among them, or simply because the audience was too specific.

Aia's spacesuit didn't resemble clothes at all and looked like a large, stuffed suitcase, the only advantage of which was that it was designed for a whole day of autonomous work.

From a close distance the white "bird" wasn't at all like a bird: just there was a white, smooth, almost vertical wall near the eastern entrance. Wall that was soaring to a height of hundred meters toward the coal-black lunar sky.

Aia didn't even need to turn on the radio in order to hear that the bird that had landed on the moon was still singing. The bird sang and inside it rustled life.

"Do you hear?" said Lukasz directly to Aia's spacesuit, bypassing the radio. "Perhaps they are like us."

"Perhaps," agreed Aia, pulling the arms inside from the wide, not-sized sleeves of the spacesuit, and turning on the radio near her chin. "Do you hear me, Benji? They are like us."

"Well, since the word "we" is too wrong, it means they look like you," said Benji, dressed in the similar suit for protection against pressure difference. "Are these a human beings?"

"These are the Makers." Aia touched the white wall, and it answered through her gloves with a thin, taut jingle.

31. 2330th year. Alpha.

In general, the Makers experienced the news about aliens phlegmatically, judiciously and even almost indifferently. To say that everyone still lived his own life is not to say anything.

All these three hundred years that Alpha was spinning in the orbit of the Earth, they were only bystanders, observers of the events that were floating by them: the earthlings kept making them laugh with their thoughtlessness and dejection, but all this time the Earth was too distant and too alien.

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.