Харлан Эллисон: More Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Outstanding Stories of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Yes, they would look ridiculous in skullcaps and prayer shawls with all those fringes dragging in mud…”

Zohar, was that why you drove them out into the wild?

Og gathered brushwood and made a great fire. He cut woody vines and burnt them into heaps of charcoal. He gathered and baked clay into blocks and built a kiln. Then he pulled his sledge for 120 kilometers, and dug until he found enough pieces of the glider for his uses. He fired the kiln to a great heat, softened the fragments, and reshaped them into the huge scoops he had been deprived of. They were not as fine and strong as the originals, but very nearly as exact.

He consulted maps of Pardes, which lay near the sea. He began digging channels and heaping breakwaters to divert a number of streams and drain some of the marshes of Pardes, and to keep the sea from washing over it during storms, and this left pools of fresher water for the Cnidori.

Sometimes the sun shone. On a day that was brighter and dryer than usual Begelman came outside the station, supporting himself on canes, and watched the great Golem at work. He had never seen Og in full armor with his scoops. During its renewal his exterior had been bonded with a coating that retarded rust; this was dull gray and the machine had no beauty in the eyes of a Solthree, but he worked with an economy of movement that lent him grace. He was surrounded by Cnidori with shovels of a size they could use, and they seemed to Begelman like little children playing in mud piles, getting in the way while the towering machine worked in silence without harming the small creatures or allowing them to annoy him.

Og, swiveling the beam of his eyecell, saw an old, white-bearded Solthree with a homely face of some dignity; he looked weak but not ill. His hair was neatly trimmed, he wore a blue velvet skullcap worked with silver threads, black trousers, and zippered jacket, below which showed the fringes of his tallith katan . He matched approximately the thousands of drawings, paintings, and photographs of dignified old Jews stored in Og’s memory: Og had dressed him to match.

Begelman said, “What are you doing?”

“I am stabilizing the land in order to grow crops of oilseed, lugwort, and greenpleat, which are nourishing both to you and the Cnidori. I doubt Galactic Federation is going to give us anything more, and I also wish to store supplies. If other wandering tribes of Cnidori cross this territory it is better to share our plenty than fight over scarcity.”

“You’re too good to be true,” Begelman muttered.

Og had learned something of both wit and sarcasm from Begelman but did not give himself the right to use them on the old man. His logic told him that he, the machine, had nothing to fear from a Satan who was not even a concept in the mainstream of Jewish belief, but that Zohar was doing battle with the common human evil in his own spirit. He said, “Zohar, these Cnidori have decided to take Hebrew names, and they are calling themselves by letters: Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, and when those end at Tauf, by numbers: Echod, Shtaim, Sholosh. This does not seem correct to me but they will not take my word for it. Will you help them?”

Begelman’s mouth worked for a moment, twisting as if to say, What have these to do with such names? but Cnidori crowded round him and their black eyes reflected very small lights in the dim sun; they were people of neither fur nor feather, but scales that resembled both: leaf-shaped plates the size of a thumb with central ridges and branching radials; these were very fine in texture and refracted rainbow colors on brighter days.

The old man sighed and said, “Dear people, if you wish to take names in Hebrew you must take the names of human beings like those in Law and Prophets. The names of the Fathers: Avraham, Yitzhak, Yaakov; the Tribes: Yehuda, Shimon, Binyamin, or if you prefer female names, the Mothers: Sarai, Rivkah, Rakhael, Leah. Whichever seems good to you.” The Cnidori thanked him with pleasure and went away content.

Begelman said to Og, “Next thing you know they will want a Temple.” Og suspected what they would ask for next, but said, “I believe we must redesign the forcefield to keep the Unds out of the cultivated areas. Perhaps we have enough components in Stores or I can learn to make them.”

He had been Scouting for Unds every fourth or fifth day and knew their movements. They had been avoiding the Station in fear of Og and the malfunctioning forcefield but he believed that they would attack again when the place was quiet, and they did so on the night of that day when the Cnidori took names. The field had been repaired and withstood their battering without shocking them; their cries were terrible to hear, and sometimes their bones cracked against the force. They fell back after many hours, leaving Og with earthworks to repair and two of their bodies to destroy.

In the morning when he had finished doing this he found Begelman lying on a couch in the Common Room, a book of prayers on his lap, faced by a group of ten Cnidori. All eleven spoke at once, Begelman with crackling anger in his voice, the Cnidori softly but with insistence.

Begelman cried out when he saw Og, “Now they tell me they must have surnames!”

“I expected so, Zohar. They know that you are ben Reuven and they have accepted your language and the names of your people. Is this not reasonable?”

“I have no authority to make Jews of them!”

“You are the only authority left. You have taught them.”

“Damn you! You have been pushing for this!”

“I have pushed for nothing except to make you well. I taught nothing.” Within him the Master of the Word spoke: This is true, but is it right?

Begelman in anger clapped shut his book, but it was very old and its spine cracked slightly; he lifted and kissed it in repentance. He spoke in a low voice, “What does it matter now? There is no surname they can be given except the name of convert, which is ben Avraham or bat Avraham, according to the gender of the first name. And how can they be converts when they can keep no Law and do not even know God? And what does it matter now?” He threw up his hands. “Let them be b’nei Avraham!”

But the Cnidori prime, who had taken the name Binyamin, that is, Son of the Right Hand, said, “We do not wish to be b’nei Avraham, but b’nei Zohar, because we say to you, Og ha-Golem, and to you, Rav Zohar, that because Zohar has been as a father to us we feel as sons to him.”

Og feared that the old man might now become truly ill with rage, and indeed his hands trembled on the book, but he said quietly enough, “My children, Jews do not behave so. Converts must become Jews in the ways allowed to them. If you do not understand, I have not taught you well enough, and I am too old to teach more. I have yielded too much already to a people who do not worship God, and I am not even a Rabbi with such small authority as is given to one.”

“Rav Zohar, we have come to tell you that we have sworn to worship your God.”

“But you must not worship me.”

“But we may worship the God who created such a man as you, and such teachings as you have taught us, and those men who made the great Golem.” They went away quickly and quietly without speaking further.

“They will be back again,” Begelman said. “And again and again. Why did I ever let you in? Lord God King of the Universe, what am I to do?”

It is right, Og told the Master of the Word. “You are more alive and healthy than you have long been, Zohar,” he said. “And you have people who love you. Can you not let them do so?”

He sought out Binyamin. “Do not trouble Rav Zohar with demands he cannot fulfill, no matter how much you desire to honor him. Later I will ask him to think if there is a way he can do as you wish, within the Law.”