He thought about what she had just said. About how his parents would react if they knew that the President of the United States wanted to speak, privately, with their son. There was a touch of bitterness in his reply.

“We might as well do it now. Why not? I have plenty of time.”

—XV—

Emigration facilities had been set up in the Mojave Desert on the West Coast of the US and in Alabama in the East. Additional Gadeu transports arrived regularly at designated locations in Britain, France, Italy, and Russia. By far the busiest and most active site was in the Negev Desert as large parts of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and smaller towns and villages began to empty out.

Among the eligible to emigrate, those who chose to remain behind in Israel were largely Orthodox. With their religious beliefs preventing them from working or fighting in the military, they soon found their situation increasingly untenable. As everyone from engineers, sanitation workers, bus drivers, electricians, plumbers, teachers, and other of the more secular elements of Israeli society availed themselves of the Gadeuans’ offer, those left behind began to experience a steady degradation of essential services. Though these were increasingly handled by Israeli citizens of Arab descent, there were not nearly enough trained non-Orthodox technicians to compensate for the departed.

The result was that, gradually but inexorably and despite some inevitable disruption, more and more non-Jews were allowed into the country not just to work but to apply for citizenship, with the result that decades of hostility and mutual suspicion were alleviated by the need to keep buses running and toilets functional. While many of the newcomers did not speak Hebrew and many of those who elected not to accept the offer of the Gadeu spoke no Arabic—or Hindi, or Berber, or Turkish—international English served as a perfectly acceptable and functional bridge among the residents of the newly cosmopolitan country.

Apart from the problems caused by the departure of so many tradesfolk, perhaps the biggest loss involved the majority of teachers.

“You have room for books?”

Robert Causeway watched as his old friend lovingly selected tomes from the shelves in his office. For decades they had taught together in the same department at the university. Next week Zimmer was leaving. Turning from the shelves, he smiled at Causeway.

“You’ve seen pictures of their ships. They’re quite capacious.” Zimmer’s gaze lingered on an omnibus volume of A Guide to the Gulf Kingdom Dialects, passing over it to choose instead a slimmer and much older leather-bound volume of Swahili: A History. Everything, every bit of knowledge that humanity had digitized, would easily accompany the several million emigrants. Examples of actual antiquity would be scarcer. A leather-bound book certainly qualified as the latter.