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."