Zimmer stared at her. “You’d leave such important resolutions up to computers?”

“Why not?” She seemed surprised. “Leave it to human rabbis and such determinations would take millennia. You do not let your own machines make such decisions?”

Though Dev felt suddenly embarrassed, he answered without hesitation. “No, we do not. While some of us might recognize and support the viability of such a process, the general population would never stand for it.”

All three Gadeu looked sympathetic. “That may be the source of many of the old world’s troubles,” Maacah observed. “You probably need to improve your machines, or yourselves. Or most likely, both.”

“It is not like none of us have been trying,” Dev replied.

“Meanwhile,” Nehorai told him, “you need to return to explain our offer.”

“Better to have my companions do so.” He indicated the Zimmers. “I am not Jewish, nor am I in any way related to a member of that ethno-religious grouping.” He was suddenly downcast. “That means I surely will not qualify to participate in the transfer.”

“I am afraid not.” There was a hint of genuine empathy in the contact officer’s voice.

It wasn’t fair, he told himself. Among everyone he knew, among all his friends, no one would have jumped sooner at the opportunity to move to another world, a new world. He was condemned by his ancestry to be left behind while others who had never given a thought to such a glorious prospect would be freely granted the opportunity.

Unless …

“I will most certainly join with my companions in explaining your proposal.” He felt a renewed urgency. “We will convey your offer first to our own government and to the government of Israel, then to the media at large. It will take scarcely a day for your offer to be known all around the planet. I presume you will provide a timeline for when people can expect to emigrate, details on what they can bring with them and what they must leave behind …”

“I am afraid they will be allowed to bring very little,” she informed him.

“… and how you will ultimately determine who can apply and who cannot. As I mentioned, I of course now have to count myself in the latter group.” If he was hoping for her to correct him, he was sorely disappointed.

“Then it is settled.” Nehorai stepped back. “Until it is time for you to be returned to the surface, which should be relatively soon, you might as well retire to your living quarters and get some rest. I suspect that when you are deposited back on the old world you will have little enough time to sleep.”

Even contemporaneous representatives of ancient civilizations, Dev recognized, could be prone to understatement.

—XIV—