Песах Амнуэль - Zion's Fiction - A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature

We sat at the side of the room, ignored by all, having done our job. I was worn out and couldn’t follow the discussion anymore. My internal counter said it was more than twelve hours since we had entered the sphere. I needed food and sleep. Shir, on the other hand, looked livelier. His programming said that the later the hour the more alert he will be, except for those five hours and twenty minutes he spent restlessly turning over in his bed each night.

Shir turned to me. “They’re about to wrap it up,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Noise is abating.” He pointed at my head. “You really should upgrade your decibel counter.”

“Then it’s decided.” Nuphar’s voice got louder, and everybody shut up. “We stay here. We’ll cut short the next waiting period, and in the meanwhile we’ll see whether we can create weapons or some means of defense for the Silence Unit.”

There were scattered cheers and a few clapped their hands, especially the ones who stood on their desks. Nuphar turned to us. She was all sweaty and her face was flushed. “You can go back home now.” She smiled, but this time the corners of her eyes did not move when she stretched her lips sideways. “We thank you for everything.”

“We are not going back home.” Shir’s voice was quiet, in comparison with the hubbub that surrounded us just a few moments before.

“So go back to your pods,” said Nuphar, her foot drumming on the top of the desk where she stood. “What’s important is that you get out of here.”

Shir spread his hands. “We do have homes. We live in a way designed to make the Superiors believe Earth is still populated.” He added, pointing at me, “Romi has a live-in partner.”

Who had remained in bed and asked me to take care. This was my only recollection of her. I never knew if Romi kept all other memories of Yonit to herself deliberately, or maybe this was all she had managed to upload to her backup. She didn’t even create Yonit. I created her, from the limbless body that waited for my first backup to come back home.

“Excellent.” Nuphar folded her arms on her chest. “Then go back home.”

I stood up, and Shir stood behind me. “We can’t go back home. We must destroy the vestibule.”

Noise exploded in the room. Shir made a face. “That’s why I don’t upgrade my decibel counter,” I whispered in his ear. He only nodded.

Nuphar raised her hands. “Silence!” she shouted. After her third attempt, the room grew a little quieter. She put her hands on her hips. “What do you mean, destroy the vestibule? The vestibule connects us with this Earth of yours. If you ever want to see humans again….”

I shook my head. “That’s too dangerous. We must defend Humankind.”

“Which means you,” Shir completed my sentence for me, gesturing at the room. “If anyone could penetrate the vestibule, they would be able to destroy the lot of you.”

Nuphar straightened up. “Only humans can….” she began, but then fell silent. Her face grew pale.

“It won’t matter at all,” shouted a voice from the crowd. I turned to where it came from. The source was a man with a white beard, wearing a purple robe and a skirt. He stood up, straightened his robe, and addressed me. “This is what you’re saying, isn’t it? That after enough information-gathering stops, they will have figured out how to breach the vestibule and kill us all.”

“Why should they?” Nuphar raised both her hands and her voice. “It makes no sense. Why should they attack us at all?”

“Because you are an invading species.” Shir stepped forwards, swinging his glare all over the room. “You might decide you’re interested in the Moon. Or Venus. Or Uranus.”

I snorted. “Nobody’s interested in Uranus. Miranda, if anything.”

“We are not an invading species!” cried Nuphar. “We are human beings. This planet belongs to us!” Shouts of agreement from all around her. She folded her hands. “I refuse to surrender without trying. We shall fight. We shall defend ourselves.”

“We shall defend you,” said Shir. “This is what we’re here for.”

An older woman stood up, wearing a golden crown and holding a scepter in her hand. “If you destroy the vestibule, we’ll never be able to come back,” she said. “Our Mission will have become pointless.” She climbed on her chair and pointed her scepter at us. “You will have destroyed humankind.” The room thundered again.

Shir and I exchanged glances. He shrugged. It was no use talking to them. Anyway, once we’d be out of here we’d decide for ourselves what to do. Our programming said, defend Humankind at all costs.

We sat back. Nuphar climbed down from her desk. She came to us, sighed, pulled up a chair, and sat down in silence.

The white-bearded man spoke louder now. “They want to bury us here.” He raised his hands. “They want us to remain in this Library for good.”

Waves of discussion swept the room like a thunderstorm, splitting and rejoining again. Someone offered to give shelter in the Library to all of our kind before the destruction of the vestibule, as a reward for saving Earth, and was immediately shouted down in protest: the Library was for Humans only, and we were most definitely non-Humans. A voice cried out that by the same token they could invite the aliens in. Shir cringed where he sat. I laid a hand on his knee in encouragement. He laid his hand on mine.

Nuphar grew rigid suddenly and looked at me. “How did the aliens discover the space-warp field?”

I shrugged. “We don’t communicate with the Superiors about anything beyond immediate defensive measures.”

She moved her eyes to Shir. “And all these invading species, are they the same kind of aliens?” she asked.

Shir shook his head. “The data systems passed on to us by the Superiors indicate different biologies, with no evolutionary connection.”

Nuphar’s face blanched. “And they all started arriving during the past two hundred years, more or less?”

I nodded.

“And you’ve never asked why? How come they all arrive at the same time to the same place?” She sighed. “Whatever happened to curiosity? Your bosses didn’t program you for it?”

Shir straightened his back. “Curiosity, that’s what killed Humankind. This is what made those first people enter an alien spaceship rather than destroy it as soon as it was discovered.”

Nuphar turned her eyes from Shir to me and back again. She nodded, slightly, and stood up. She climbed onto the desk, raised her hands and cried out, “We’ve reached a decision.”

My throat constricted. I didn’t want to leave. There were Humans here. There were the smell, and the warmth, and a sense of Humanity. But I had to leave. Shir grasped my hand. I didn’t have to look at him in order to realize that he felt the same.

“The problem with robots,” Nuphar made a gesture in our general direction, “is that they only obey preset programming. They don’t ask why. They don’t know why aliens are attacking Earth. They don’t know why aliens are mining the Moon. They don’t even know how come so many aliens developed, at the same time, a space-warp that yields to human tissue.” She turned to us and spoke more softly. “They defend us without realizing that it was we who destroyed humankind.”

The room fell silent all at once.

Nuphar bit her lower lip. She was speaking only to us now. “A time-warp field works exactly like a space-warp field, except that instead of existing everywhere simultaneously, it exists everywhen simultaneously.” Her voice steadied a bit. “Last time we were here, we left clear instructions about the date and location of our return. Obviously, parts of those instructions must have leaked out, away from Earth.”