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

^{PHYLLIS GOTLIEB} Tauf Aleph

SAMUEL ZOHAR BEN REUVEN BEGELMAN lived to a great age in the colony Pardes on Tau Ceti IV and in his last years he sent the same message with his annual request for supplies to Galactic Federation Central: Kindly send one mourner/gravedigger so I can die in peace respectfully.

And Sol III replied through GalFed Central with the unvarying answer: Regret cannot find one Jew yours faithfully.

Because there was not one other identifiable Jew in the known universe, for with the opening of space the people had scattered and intermarried, and though their descendants were as numerous, in the fulfillment of God’s promise, as the sands on the shore and the stars in the heavens, there was not one called Jew, nor any other who could speak Hebrew and pray for the dead. The home of the ancestors was emptied: it was now a museum where perfect simulacra performed 7500 years of history in hundreds of languages for tourists from the breadth of the Galaxy.

In Central, Hrsipliy the Xiploid said to Castro-Ibanez the Solthree, “It is a pity we cannot spare one person to help that poor juddar.” She meant by this term: body/breath/spirit/sonofabitch, being a woman with three tender hearts.

Castro-Ibanez, who had one kind heart and one hard head, answered, “How can we? He is the last colonist on that world and refuses to be moved; we keep him alive at great expense already.” He considered for some time and added, “I think perhaps we might send him a robot. One that can dig and speak recorded prayers. Not one of the new expensive ones. We ought to have some old machine good enough for last rites.”

O/G5/842 had been resting in a very dark corner of Stores for 324 years, his four coiled arms retracted and his four hinged ones resting on his four wheeled feet. Two of his arms terminated in huge scoop shovels, for he had been an ore miner, and he was also fitted with treads and sucker-pods. He was very great in size; they made giant machines in those days. New technologies had left him useless; he was not even worthy of being dismantled for parts.

It happened that this machine was wheeled into the light, scoured of rust, and lubricated. His ore-scoops were replaced with small ones retrieved from Stores and suitable for grave-digging, but in respect to Sam Begelman he was not given a recording: he was rewired and supplemented with an almost new logic and given orders and permission to go and learn. Once he had done so to the best of his judgment he would travel out with Begelman’s supplies and land. This took great expense, but less than an irreplaceable person or a new machine; it fulfilled the Galactic-Colonial contract. O/G would not return, Begelman would rest in peace, no one would recolonize Tau Ceti IV.

O/G5/842 emerged from his corner. In the Library he caused little more stir than the seven members of the Khagodi embassy (650 kilos apiece) who were searching out a legal point of intra-Galactic law. He was too broad to occupy a cubicle, and let himself be stationed in a basement exhibit room where techs wired him to sensors, sockets, inlets, outlets, screens, and tapes. Current flowed, light came, and he said, LET ME KNOW SAMUEL ZOHAR BEN REUVEN BEGELMAN DOCTOR OF MEDICINE AND WHAT IT MEANS THAT HE IS A JEW.

He recorded the life of Sam Begelman; he absorbed Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek; he learned Torah, which is Law: day one. He learned Writings, Prophets, and then Mishna, which is the first exegesis of Law: day the second. He learned Talmud (Palestinian and Babylonian), which is the completion of Law, and Tosefta, which are ancillary writings and divergent opinions in Law: day the third. He read thirty-five hundred years of Commentary and Responsa: day the fourth. He learned Syriac, Arabic, Latin, Yiddish, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Dutch. At the point of learning Chinese he experienced, for the first time, a synapse. For the sake of reading marginally relevant writings by fewer than ten Sino-Japanese Judaic poets it was not worth learning their vast languages; this gave him pause: two nanoseconds: day the fifth. Then he plunged, day the sixth, into the literatures written in the languages he had absorbed. Like all machines, he did not sleep, but on the seventh day he unhooked himself from Library equipment, gave up his space, and returned to his corner. In this place he turned down all motor and afferent circuits and indexed, concordanced, cross-referenced. He developed synapses exponentially to complete and fulfill his logic. Then he shut it down and knew nothing.

But Galactic Federation said, O/G5/842, AROUSE YOURSELF AND BOARD THE SHIP Aleksandr Nevskii AT LOADING DOCK 377 BOUND FOR TAU CETI IV.

At the loading dock, Flight Admissions said, YOUR SPACE HAS BEEN PREEMPTED FOR SHIPMENT 20 TONNES Nutrivol POWDERED DRINKS (39 FLAVORS) TO DESERT WORLDS TAU CETI II AND III.

O/G knew nothing of such matters and said, I HAVE NOT BEEN INSTRUCTED SO. He called Galactic Federation and said, MOD 0885 THE SPACE ASSIGNED FOR ME IS NOT PERMITTED IT HAS BEEN PREEMPTED BY A BEING CALLED Nutrivol SENDING POWDERED DRINKS TO TAU CETI INNER WORLDS.

Mod 0885 said, I AM CHECKING. YES. THAT COMPANY WENT INTO RECEIVERSHIP ONE STANDARD YEAR AGO. I SUSPECT SMUGGLING AND BRIBERY. I WILL WARN.

THE SHIP WILL BE GONE BY THEN MOD 08 WHAT AM I TO DO?

INVESTIGATE, MOD 842.

HOW AM I TO DO THAT?

USE YOUR LOGIC, said Mod 0885 and signed off.

O/G went to the loading dock and stood in the way. The beings ordering the loading mechs said, “You are blocking this shipment! Get out of the way, you old pile of scrap!”

O/G said in his speaking voice, “I am not in the way. I am to board ship for Pardes and it is against the law for this cargo to take my place.” He extruded a limb in gesture toward the stacked cartons; but he had forgotten his strength (for he had been an ore miner) and his new scoop smashed five cartons at one blow; the foam packing parted and white crystals poured from the break. O/G regretted this very greatly for one fraction of a second before he remembered how those beings who managed the mines behaved in the freezing darkness of lonely worlds and moons. He extended his chemical sensor and dipping it into the crystal stream said, “Are fruit drinks for desert worlds now made without fructose but with dextroamphetamine sulfate, diacetylmorphine, 2-acetyl-terrahydrocannabinol—”

Some of the beings at the loading gate cried out curses and many machines began to push and beat at him. But O/G pulled in his limbs and planted his sucker-pods and did not stir. He had been built to work in many gravities near absolute zero under rains of avalanches. He would not be moved.

Presently uniformed officials came and took away those beings and their cargo, and said to O/G, “You too must come and answer questions.”

But he said, “I was ordered by Galactic Federation to board this ship for Tau Ceti IV, and you may consult the legal department of Colonial Relations, but I will not be moved.”

Because they had no power great enough to move him they consulted among themselves and with the legal department and said, “You may pass.”

Then O/G took his assigned place in the cargo hold of the Aleksandr Nevskii and after the ship lifted for Pardes he turned down his logic because he had been ordered to think for himself for the first time and this confused him very much.

The word pardes is “orchard” but the world Pardes was a bog of mud, foul gases, and shifting terrains, where attempts at terraforming failed again and again until colonists left in disgust and many lawsuits plagued the courts of Interworld Colonies at GalFed. O/G landed there in a stripped shuttle which served as a glider. It was not meant to rise again and it broke and sank in the marshes, but O/G plowed mud, scooping the way before him, and rode on treads, dragging the supplies behind him on a sledge, for 120 kilometers before he came within sight of the colony.

Fierce creatures many times his size, with serpentine necks and terrible fangs, tried to prey on him. He wished to appease them, and offered greetings in many languages, but they would only break their teeth on him. He stunned one with a blow to the head, killed another by snapping its neck, and they left him alone.

The colony center was a concrete dome surrounded by a forcefield that gave out sparks, hissing and crackling. Around it he found many much smaller creatures splashing in pools and scrambling to and fro at the mercy of one of the giants who held a small being writhing in its jaws.

O/G cried in a loud voice, “Go away you savage creature!” and the serpent beast dropped its mouthful, but seeing no great danger dipped its neck to pick it up again. So O/G extended his four hinged limbs to their greatest length and, running behind the monster seized the pillars of its rear legs, heaving up and out until its spine broke and it fell flattened in mud, thrashing the head on the long neck until it drove it into the ground and smothered.

The small beings surrounded O/G without fear, though he was very great to them, and cried in their thin voices, “Shalom, shalom, Savior!”

O/G was astonished to hear these strangers speaking clear Hebrew. He had not known a great many kinds of living persons during his experience, but among those displayed in the corridors of the Library basement these most resembled walruses. “I am not a savior, men of Pardes,” he said in the same language. “Are you speaking your native tongue?”

“No, Redeemer. We are Cnidori and we spoke Cnidri before we reached this place in our wanderings, but we learned the language of Rav Zohar because he cared for us when we were lost and starving.”

“Now Zohar has put up a barrier and shut you out—and I am not a redeemer—but what has happened to that man?”

“He became very ill and shut himself away because he said he was not fit to look upon. The food he helped us store is eaten and the Unds are ravaging us.”

“There are some here that will ravage you no longer. Do you eat the flesh of these ones?”

“No, master. Only what grows from the ground.”

He saw that beneath the draggling gray moustaches their teeth were the incisors and molars of herbivores. “I am not your master. See if there is food to gather here and I will try to reach Zohar.”

“First we will skin one of these to make tents for shelter. It rains every hour.” They rose on their haunches in the bog, and he discovered that though their rear limbs were flippers like those of aquatic animals, their forelimbs bore three webbed fingers apiece and each Cnidor had a small shell knife slung over one shoulder. All, moreover, had what appeared to be one mammalian teat and one male generative organ ranged vertically on their bellies, and they began to seem less and less like walruses to O/G. The prime Cnidor continued, “Tell us what name pleases you if you are offended by the ways we address you.”

“I have no name but a designation: O/G5/842. I am only a machine.”

“You are a machine of deliverance and so we will call you Golem.”

In courtesy O/G accepted the term. “This forcefield is so noisy it probably has a malfunction. It is not wise to touch it.”

“No, we are afraid of it.”

Golem scooped mud from the ground and cast it at the forcefield; great lightnings and hissings issued where it landed. “I doubt even radio would cross that.”

“Then how can we reach Zohar, Golem, even if he is still alive?”

“I will cry out, Cnidori. Go to a distance and cover your ears, because my voice can pierce a mountain of lead ore.”

They did not know what that was, but they removed themselves, and Golem turned his volume to its highest and called in a mighty voice, “Samuel Zohar ben Reuven Begelman turn off your forcefield for I have come from Galactic Federation to help you!!!”

Even the forcefield buckled for one second at the sound of his voice.

After a long silence, Golem thought he heard a whimper, from a great distance. “I believe he is alive but cannot reach the control.”

A Cnidor said, trembling, “The Unds have surely heard you, because they are coming back again.”

And they did indeed come back, bellowing, hooting, and striking with their long necks. Golem tied one great snake neck in a knot and cried again, “Let us in, Zohar, or the Unds will destroy all of your people!!!”

The forcefield vanished, and the Cnidori scuttled over its border beneath the sheltering arms of Golem, who cracked several fanged heads like nutshells with his scoops.

“Now put up your shield!!!” And the people were saved.

When Golem numbered them and they declared that only two were missing among forty he said, “Wait here and feed yourselves.”

The great outer doorway for working machines was open, but the hangar and storerooms were empty of them; they had been removed by departing colonists. None had been as huge as Golem, and here he removed his scoops and unhinged his outer carapace with its armor, weapons, and storage compartments, for he wished to break no more doorways than necessary. Behind him he pulled the sledge with the supplies.

When his heat sensor identified the locked door behind which Zohar was to be found, he removed the doorway as gently as he could.

“I want to die in peace and you are killing me with noise,” said a weak voice out of the darkness.

By infrared Golem saw the old man crumpled on the floor by the bed, filthy and half naked, with the shield control resting near his hand. He turned on light. The old man was nearly bald, wasted and yellowskinned, wrinkled, his rough beard tangled and clotted with blood.

“Zohar?”

Sam Begelman opened his eyes and saw a tremendous machine, multi-armed and with wheels and treads, wound with coiling tubes and wires, studded with dials. At its top was a dome banded with sensor lenses, and it turned this way and that to survey the room. “What are you?” he whispered in terror. “Where is my kaddish?”

He spoke in lingua, but O/G replied in Hebrew. “You know you are the last Jew in the known universe, Rav Zohar. There is no one but me to say prayers for you.”

“Then let me die without peace,” said Begelman, and closed his eyes.

But Golem knew the plan of the station, and within five minutes he reordered the bed in cleanliness, placed the old man on it, set up an IV, cleansed him, and injected him with the drugs prepared for him. The old man’s hands pushed at him and pushed at him, uselessly. “You are only a machine,” he croaked. “Can’t you understand that a machine can’t pray?”

“Yes, master. I would have told that to Galactic Federation, but I knew they would not believe me, not being Jews.”

“I am not your master. Why truly did you come?”

“I was made new again and given orders. My growth in logic now allows me to understand that I cannot be of use to you in exactly the way Galactic Federation wished, but I can still make you more comfortable.”

“I don’t care!” Begelman snarled. “Who needs a machine?”

“The Cnidori needed me to save them from the Unds when you shut them out, and they tried to call me Savior, Redeemer, master; I refused because I am a machine, but I let them call me Golem because I am a machine of deliverance.”

Begelman sniffed. But the sick yellow of his skin was gone; his face was faintly pink and already younger by a few years.

“Shmuel Zohar ben Reuven Begelman, why do you allow those helpless ones to call you Rav Zohar and speak in your language?”

“You nudnik of a machine, my name is not Samuel and certainly not Shmuel! It is Zohar, and I let myself be called Sam because zohar is ‘splendor’ and you can’t go through life as Splendor Begelman! I taught those Cnidori the Law and the Prophets to hear my own language spoken because my children are gone and my wife is dead. That is why they call me Teacher. And I shut them out so that they would be forced to make their own way in life before they began to call me Redeemer! What do you call yourself, Golem?”

“My designation is O/G5/842.”

“Ah. Og the giant King of Bashan. That seems suitable.”

“Yes, Zohar. That one your Rabbi Moshe killed in the land of Kana’an with all his people for no great provocation. But O is the height of my oxygen tolerance in Solthree terms; I cannot work at gravities of less than five newtons, and eight four two is my model number. Now Zohar, if you demand it I will turn myself off and be no more. But the people are within your gate; some of them have been killed and they must still be cared for.”

Zohar sighed, but he smiled a little as well. Yet he spoke slowly because he was very ill. “Og ha-Golem, before you learn how to tune an argument too fine remember that Master of the Word is one of the names of Satan. Moshe Rabbenu was a bad-tempered man but he did very greatly, and I am no kind of warrior. Take care of the people, and me too if your… logic demands it—and I will consider how to conduct myself off the world properly.”

“I am sure your spirit will free itself in peace, Zohar. As for me, my shuttle is broken, I am wanted nowhere else, and I will rust in Pardes.”

Og ha-Golem went out of the presence of the old man but it seemed to him as if there were some mild dysfunction in his circuits, for he was mindful—if that is the term—of Begelman’s concept of the Satan, Baal Davar, and he did not know for certain if what he had done by the prompting of his logic was right action. How can I know? he asked himself. By what harms and what saves, he answered. By what seems to harm and what seems to save, says the Master of the Word.

Yet he continued by the letter of his instructions from Galactic Federation, and these were to give the old man comfort. For the Cnidori he helped construct tents, because they liked water under their bellies but not pouring on their heads. With his own implements he flensed the bodies of the dead Unds, cleaned their skins, and burned their flesh; it was not kosher for Begelman and attracted bothersome scavengers. He did this while Rav Zohar was sleeping and spoke to the people in his language; they had missed it when he was ill. “Zohar believes you must learn to take care of yourselves, against the Unds and on your world, because you cannot now depend on him.”

“We would do that, Golem, but we would also like to give comfort to our Teacher.”

Og ha-Golem was disturbed once again by the ideas that pieced themselves together in his logic and said to Begelman, “Zohar, you have taught the Cnidori so well that now they are capable of saying the prayers you long for so greatly. Is there a way in which that can be made permissible?”

The old man folded his hands and looked about the bare and cracking walls of the room, as Golem had first done, and then back at him. “In this place?” he whispered. “Do you know what you are saying?”

“Yes, Zohar.”

“How they may be made Jews?”

“They are sentient beings. What is there to prevent it?”

Begelman’s face became red and Og checked his blood-pressure monitor. “Prevent it! What is there to them that would make Jews? Everything they eat is neutral, neither kosher nor tref, so what use is the law of Kashrut? They live in mud—where are the rules of bathing and cleanliness? They had never had any kind of god or any thought of one, as far as they tell me—what does prayer mean? Do you know how they procreate? Could you imagine? They are so completely hermaphroditic the word is meaningless. They pair long enough to raise children together, but only until the children grow teeth and can forage. What you see that looks like a penis is really an ovipositor: each Cnidor who is ready deposits eggs in the pouch of another, and an enzyme of the eggs stimulates the semen glands inside, and when one or two eggs become fertilized the pouch seals until the fetus is of a size to make the fluid pressure around it break the seal, and the young crawls up the belly of the parent to suckle on the teat. Even if one or two among twenty are born incomplete, not one is anything you might call male or female! So tell me, what do you do with all the laws of marriage and divorce, sexual behavior, the duties of the man at prayer and the woman with the child?”

He was becoming out of breath and Og checked oxygen and heart monitors. “I am not a man or woman either and though I know the Law I am ignorant in experience. I was thinking merely of prayers that God might listen to in charity or appreciation. I did not mean to upset you. I am not fulfilling my duties.”

“Leave me.”

Og turned an eyecell to the dripping of the IV and removed catheter and urine bag. “You are nearly ready to rise from your bed and feed yourself, Zohar. Perhaps when you feel more of a man you may reconsider.”

“Just go away.” He added, snarling, “God doesn’t need any more Jews!”

“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.”

“We will do whatever you advise, Golem.”

Og continued with his work, but while he was digging he turned up a strange artifact and he had a foreboding. At times he had discovered potsherds which were the remnants of clay vessels the Cnidori had made to cook vegetables they could not digest raw, and this discovery was an almost whole cylinder of the same texture, color, and markings; one of its end rims was blackened by burn marks, and dark streaks ran up its sides. He did not know what it was but it seemed sinister to him; in conscience he had no choice but to show it to Zohar.

“It does not seem like a cooking vessel,” he said.

“No,” said Begelman. “It does not.” He pointed to a place inside where there was a leaf-shaped Cnidori scale, blackened, clinging to its wall, and to two other burn marks of the same shape. Strangely, to Og, his eyes filled with tears.

“Perhaps it is a casing in which they dispose of their dead,” Og said.

Zohar wiped his eyes and said, “No. It is a casing in which they make them dead. Many were killed by Unds, and some have starved and the rest die of age. All those they weight and sink into the marshes. This is a sacrifice. They have a god, and its name is Baal.” He shook his head. “My children.” He wept for a moment again and said, “Take this away and smash it until there is not a piece to recognize.”

Og did so, but Zohar locked himself into his room and would not answer to anyone.

Og did not know what to do now. He was again as helpless as he had been on the loading dock where he had first learned to use his logic.

The Cnidori came to inquire of Golem and he told them what had happened. They said, “It is true that our ancestors worshipped a Being and made sacrifices, but none of that was done after Zohar gave us help. We were afraid he and his God would hold us in contempt.”

“Both Zohar and his God have done imperfect acts. But now I will leave him alone, because he is very troubled.”

“But it is a great sin in his eyes,” said Binyamin sorrowfully. “I doubt that he will ever care for us again.”

And Og continued with his work, but he thought his logic had failed him, in accordance with Zohar’s taunts.

In the evening a Cnidor called Elyahu came writhing toward him along the ground in great distress. “Come quickly!” he called. “Binyamin is doing nidset!”

“What is that?”

“Only come quickly!” Elyahu turned back in haste. Og unclipped his scoops and followed, overtaking the small creature and bearing him forward in his arms. They found Binyamin and other Cnidori in a grove of ferns. They had built a smoky fire and were placing upon it a fresh cylinder: a network of withy branches had been woven into the bottom of it.

“No, no!” cried Og, but they did not regard him; the cylinder was set on the fire and smoke came out of its top. Then the Cnidori helped Binyamin climb over its edge and he dropped inward, into the smoke.

“No!” Og cried again, and he toppled the vessel from the fire, but without violence so that Binyamin would not be harmed. “You shall make no sacrifices!” Then he tapped it so that it split, and the Cnidor lay in its halves, trembling.

“That is nidset, Golem,” said Elyahu.

But Golem plucked up the whimpering Cnidor. “Why were you doing such a terrible thing, Binyamin?”

“We thought,” Binyamin said in a quavering voice, “we thought that all of the gods were angry with us—our old god for leaving him and our new one for having worshipped the old—and that a sacrifice would take away the anger of all.”

“That confounds my logic somewhat.” Og set down Binyamin, beat out the fire, and cast the pieces of the cylinder far away. “All gods are One, and the One forgives whoever asks. Now come. I believe I hear the Unds again, and we need shelter close to home until we can build a wider one.”

Then the Cnidori raised a babble of voices. “No! What good is such a God if even Zohar does not listen to Him and forgive us?”

It seemed to Og for one moment as if the Cnidori felt themselves cheated of a sacrifice; he put this thought aside. “The man is sick and old, and he is not thinking clearly either, while you have demanded much of him.”

“Then, Golem, we will demand no more, but die among the Unds!” The shrieking of the beasts grew louder on the night winds but the Cnidori drew their little knives and would not stir.

“Truly you are an outrageous people,” said Golem. “But I am only a machine.” He extended his four hinged arms and his four coil arms and bearing them up in their tens raced with them on treads and wheels until they were within the safety of the forcefield.

But when he set them down they grouped together closely near the field and would not say one word.

Og considered the stubborn Zohar on the one side, and the stubborn b’nei Avraham on the other, and he thought that perhaps it was time for him to cease his being. A great storm of lightning and thunder broke out; the Unds did not approach and within the forcefield there was stillness.

He disarmed himself and stood before Zohar’s door. He considered the sacrifice of Yitzhak, and the Golden Calf, and of how Moshe Rabbenu had broken the Tables, and of many excellent examples, and he spoke quietly.

“Zohar, you need not answer, but you must listen. Your people tell me they have made no sacrifices since they knew you. But Binyamin, who longs to call himself your son, has tried to sacrifice himself to placate whatever gods may forgive his people, and would have died if I had not prevented him. After that they were ready to let the Unds kill them. I prevented that also, but they will not speak to me, or to you if you do not forgive them. I cannot do any more here and I have nothing further to say to you. Good-bye.”

He turned from the door without waiting, but heard it open, and Zohar’s voice cried out, “Og, where are you going?”

“To the storeroom, to turn myself off. I have always said I was no more than a machine, and now I have reached the limit of my logic and my usefulness.”

“No, Golem, wait! Don’t take everything from me!” The old man was standing with hands clasped and hair awry. “There must be some end to foolishness,” he whispered. “Where are they?”

“Out by the field near the entrance,” Og said. “You will see them when the lightning flashes.”

The Holy One, blessed be His Name, gave Zohar one more year, and in that time Og ha-Golem built and planted, and in this he was helped by the b’nei Avraham. They made lamps from their vegetable oils and lit them on Sabbaths and the Holy Days calculated by Zohar. In season they mated and their bellies swelled. Zohar tended them when his strength allowed, as in old days, and when Elyahu died of brain hemorrhage and Yitzhak of a swift-growing tumor which nothing could stop, he led the mourners in prayer for their length of days. One baby was stillborn, but ten came from the womb in good health; they were gray-pink, toothless, and squalled fearfully, but Zohar fondled and praised them. “These people were twelve when I found them,” he said to Og. “Now there are forty-six and I have known them for five generations.” He told the Cnidori, “Children of Avraham, Jews have converted, and Jews have adopted, but never children of a different species, so there is no precedent I can find to let any one of you call yourself a child of Zohar, but as a community I see no reason why you cannot call yourselves b’nei Zohar, my children, collectively.”

The people were wise enough by now to accept this decision without argument. They saw that the old man’s time of renewed strength was done and he was becoming frailer every day; they learned to make decisions for themselves. Og too helped him now only when he asked. Zohar seemed content, although sometimes he appeared about to speak and remained silent. The people noticed these moods and spoke to Og of them occasionally, but Og said, “He must tend to his spirit for himself, b’nei Avraham. My work is done.”

He had cleared the land in many areas around the station, and protected them with forcefields whose antennas he had made with forges he had built. The Unds were driven back into their wilds of cave and valley; they were great and terrible, but magnificent life-forms of their own kind and he wished to kill no more. He had only to wait for the day when Zohar would die in peace.

Once a day Og visited him in the Common Room where he spent most of his time reading or with his hands on his book and his eyes to the distance. One peaceful day when they were alone he said to Og, “I must tell you this while my head is still clear. And I can tell only you.” He gathered his thoughts for a moment. “It took me a long time to realize that I was the last Jew, though Galactic Federation kept saying so. I had been long alone, but that realization made me fiercely, hideously lonely. Perhaps you don’t understand. I think you do. And then my loneliness turned itself inside out and I grew myself a kind of perverse pride. The last! The last! I would close the Book that was opened those thousands of years before, as great in a way as the first had been… but I had found the Cnidori, and they were a people to talk with and keep from going mad in loneliness—but Jews! They were ugly, and filthy, and the opposite of everything I saw as human. I despised them. Almost, I hated them… that was what wanted to be Jews! And I had started it by teaching them, because I was so lonely—and I had no way to stop it except to destroy them, and I nearly did that! And you—” He began to weep with the weak passion of age.

“Zohar, do not weep. You will make yourself ill.”

“My soul is sick! It is like a boil that needs lancing, and it hurts so much! Who will forgive me?” He reached out and grasped one of Og’s arms. “Who?”

“They will forgive you anything—but if you ask you will only hurt yourself more deeply. And I make no judgments.”

“But I must be judged!” Zohar cried. “Let me have a little peace to die with!”

“If I must, then, Zohar, I judge you a member of humanity who has saved more people than would be alive without him. I think you could not wish better.”

Zohar said weakly, “You knew all the time, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Og. “I believe I did.”

But Zohar did not hear, for he had fainted.

He woke in his bed and when his eyes opened he saw Og beside him. “What are you?” he said, and Og stared with his unwinking eye; he thought Zohar’s mind had left him.

Then Zohar laughed. “My mind is not gone yet. But what are you, really, Og? You cannot answer. Ah well… would you ask my people to come here now, so I can say good-bye? I doubt it will be long; they raise all kinds of uproar, but at least they can’t cry.”

Og brought the people, and Zohar blessed them all and each; they were silent, in awe of him. He seemed to fade while he spoke, as if he were being enveloped in mist. “I have no advice for you,” he whispered at last. “I have taught all I know and that is little enough because I am not very wise, but you will find the wise among yourselves. Now, whoever remembers, let him recite me a psalm. Not the twenty-third. I want the hundred and fourth, and leave out that stupid part at the end where the sinners are consumed from the earth.”

But it was only Og who remembered that psalm in its entirety, and spoke the words describing the world Zohar had come from an unmeasurable time ago.

When he was finished, Zohar said the Shema, which tells that God is One, and died. And Og thought that he must be pleased with his dying.

Og removed himself. He let the b’nei Avraham prepare the body, wrap it in the prayer shawl, and bury it. He waited during the days in which the people sat in mourning, and when they had gotten up he said, “Surely my time is come.” He traveled once about the domains he had created for their inhabitants and returned to say good-bye in fewer words than Zohar had done.

But the people cried, “No, Golem, no! How can you leave us now when we need you so greatly?”

“You are not children. Zohar told you that you must manage for yourselves.”

“But we have so much to learn. We do not know how to use the radio, and we want to tell Galactic Federation that Zohar is dead, and of all he and you have done for us.”

“I doubt that Galactic Federation is interested,” said Og.

“Nevertheless we will learn!”

They were a stubborn people. Og said, “I will stay for that, but no longer.”

Then Og discovered he must teach them enough lingua to make themselves understood by Galactic Federation. All were determined learners, and a few had a gift for languages. When he had satisfied himself that they were capable, he said, “Now.”

And they said, “Og ha-Golem, why must you waste yourself? We have so much to discover about the God we worship and the men who have worshipped Him!”

“Zohar taught you all he knew, and that was a great deal.”

“Indeed he taught us the Law and the Prophets, but he did not teach us the tongues of Aramaic or Greek, or Writings, or Mishna, or Talmud (Palestinian and Babylonian), or Tosefta, or Commentary, or—”

“But why must you learn all that?”

“To keep it for others who may wish to know of it when we are dead.”

So Og surrounded himself with them, the sons and daughters of Avraham and their children, who now took surnames of their own from womb parents—and all of them b’nei Zohar—and he began: “Here is Misha, given by word of mouth from Scribe to Scribe for a thousand years. Fifth Division, Nezikin, which is Damages; Baba Metzia: the Middle Gate: ‘If two took hold of a garment and one said, “I found it,” and the other said, “I found it,” or one said, “I bought it,” and the other said, “I bought it,” each takes an oath that he claims not less than half and they divide it…’”

In this manner Og ha-Golem, who had endless patience, lived a thousand and twenty years. By radio the Galaxy heard of the strange work of strange creatures, and over hundreds of years colonists who wished to call themselves b’nei Avraham drifted inward to re-create the world Pardes. They were not great in number, but they made a world. From pardes is derived “Paradise” but in the humble world of Pardes the peoples drained more of the swamps and planted fruitful orchards and pleasant gardens. All of these were named for their creators, except one.

When Og discovered that his functions were deteriorating, he refused replacement parts and directed that when he stopped all of his components must be dismantled and scattered to the ends of the earth, for fear of idolatry. But a garden was named for him, may his spirit rest in justice and his carapace rust in peace, and the one being who had no organic life is remembered with love among living things.

Here the people live, doing good and evil, contending with God and arguing with each other as usual, and all keep the Tradition as well as they can. Only the descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants, once called Cnidori, jealously guard for themselves the privilege of the name b’nei Zohar, and they are considered by the others to be snobbish, clannish, and stiff-necked.