Chapter 51 Chapter Thirteen

Imperial had paid for a review team to sort through the submissions and see if one or two of them might be good for Rachel.Much information has been thrown aside.Part of the medical and research agenda is carefully considered.In the end, all the research methods and experimental treatments mentioned in the proposal seem to have been tested by Imperial University.Suddenly, a super-light message attracted Sol's attention.Is this Hebron Cofa?A simple message from Chairman Sharon Gibbs: If it's too much to handle, come here. It quickly becomes overwhelming.The encirclement appeared to be on the rise in the first few months after the reports were published, but this was only the prelude to a second onslaught.Media tabloids portray Saul as a "wandering Jew," a desperate father who wanders to give his children strange medicines and find remedies—a headline that's ironic for Saul's lifelong aversion to travel.Sarai was inevitably labeled a "grieving mother".Rachel becomes "The Doomed Child," and in another artistically embellished headline, she's the "Virgin Forever Cursed by the Time Tomb." Whenever any member of the family goes out, they meet journalists or Imager hidden behind a tree.

Clover discovers that the Winterboroughs' misfortune can bring big money.At first the town didn't intervene, but then Barsad City entrepreneurs moved in and built gift shops, T-shirt fairs, sightseeing spots and data chip kiosks, tourists came more and more, local businessmen Finally, I was flustered and my confidence was shaken, and then I reached a consensus that the fertile water here can no longer flow to outsiders' fields. After four hundred and thirty-nine standard years of near-isolation, Clovertown finally welcomed her teleportation terminal.Visitors no longer have to endure the twenty-minute flight from Barsad City.The number of tourists is still increasing.

On the day they moved, it was pouring rain and the streets were deserted.Rachel didn't cry, but she kept her eyes wide open all day, and her tone was full of grievances.It was her sixth birthday in ten days. "But, Dad, why on earth are we moving?" "Because we have to move, dear." "But why?" "It's just something we have to do, little one. You'll love Hebron. There's a lot of parks there." "But why didn't you guys ever say you were going to move before?" "We said it, darling. You just forgot." "But what about grandparents and grandparents and Uncle Richard and Aunt Tessa and Uncle Thor and the others?"

"They can come and visit us anytime." "What about Nikki, Li Na, and all my friends?" Saul loaded the last piece of luggage onto the electromagnetic car without a word.The house had been sold and was empty; the furniture had been sold or sent to Hebron.The previous week had been surrounded by a crowd of relatives, old friends, acquaintances from school, even members of the research team at Imperial who had worked with Rachel for eighteen years, but now the streets were deserted.On the dome-shaped plexiglass top shell of the old-fashioned electromagnetic vehicle, the rainwater traced water trails, extending into interlaced small rivers.The three of them sat for a while in the car, looking at the house.The car smelled of wet wool mixed with wet hair.

"It's so unfair," Rachel said, hugging the teddy bear Sarai rescued from the attic six months earlier. "Yeah," Saul agreed, "it's not fair." Hebron is a desert planet.After four centuries of terraforming, the planet's atmosphere is breathable and there are millions of acres of land to cultivate.The creatures that had once lived there were short and stocky and infinitely alert, as were the creatures transported from the old lands, including humans. "Ah." Saul took a deep breath as they reached the village of Dan under the sun-baked Kefa Sharon Gibbs. "We Jews are such masochists. Twenty thousand of them when the exile began." There are planets to choose from, and those idiots chose here."

But neither the first colonists nor the Saul family came here because they were masochists.Although most of Hebron is desert, the fertile land is amazingly rich.Sinai University is well-known throughout the ring network, and the medical center has attracted wealthy patients, which has also brought considerable financial resources to the cooperative.Hebron is not allowed to build portals anywhere other than the only teleportation terminal in New Jerusalem.Hebron belongs neither to the Overlord nor to the Protectorate, and she taxes tourists heavily for teleportation rights, and does not allow any visitors to go outside the New Jerusalem.For a Jew looking for a private space, this is probably the safest place on the three hundred planets that humans have set foot on.

Traditionally, Gibbs is a cooperative, but in reality it is not.The Winterbergs were greeted warmly in their new home—a modest place, sunny and dry, with rounded corners, no sharp right-angle turns, wooden floors, and a The house looks down to the endless stretch of desert beyond the orange and olive jungle.The sun seemed to drain everything, Thor thought, even anxiety and nightmares.Light obeys the laws of nature.At night, after the sun had gone down for an hour, their house would glow pink. Every morning, Saul would sit by his daughter's bed and wait for her to wake up.His daughter's confusion was always painful for him in the first few minutes, but he insisted on making sure that he was the first thing Rachel saw when she woke up every morning.He hugged her and answered her questions one by one.

"Where are we, Dad?" "In a wonderful place, little one. I'll tell you all about it at breakfast." "How did we get here?" "We teleported, took the airship for a while, and then walked a little bit," he always said, "it's not too far from home... but the distance is long enough to consider it an adventure. " "But here's my bed... and my stuffed animals... why can't I remember when they came?" So Saul would wrap his arms around her gently, look into her brown eyes, and say, "You had an accident, Rachel. Remember that story in The Homesick Toad?" Lens broke his brain, and for days he forgot where he lived. That's the kind of accident you get."

"Am I better now?" "Much better," Thor would say, "your whole body is much better." Then the room would be filled with the smell of breakfast, and they would all walk up to the terrace, where Sarai was waiting for them. Rachel has more playmates than before.There is a school in the Gibbutz commune, and she always goes there to play, is welcomed by everyone, and greets everyone every day as if they were meeting for the first time.The children spent long afternoons playing in the orchard and exploring along the cliffs. The three elders on the council, Averna, Robert, and Ephraim, all urged Saul to continue writing his writings.Hebron has always been proud of the many scholars, artists, musicians, philosophers, writers, composers it has sheltered citizens and long-term residents.The house to live in, they point out, is a gift from the state.Although Saul's pension is not high in terms of ring network standards, is it necessary to satisfy them in Kefa?The basic needs of the salon are more than adequate.And most of all to Sol's surprise, he found himself taking pleasure in physical labor.Whether it's working in the orchard, clearing rocks from uncultivated land, or building walls for the city, Sol finds that his mind and spirit are freer than he's ever been in many years.He found he could mentally wrestle with Kierkegaard while waiting for the plaster to dry, and he could draw new insights into Kant's and Van der's theories while checking apples for worms.At the age of seventy-three standard years, Thor's wounded heart finally healed the scab for the first time.

In the evening, he would play games with Rachel, and then ask Judy or other nearby girls to look after the sleeping children, so that he and Sarai could go for a walk at the foot of the mountain.Sol and Sarai went to New Jerusalem alone one weekend, the first time they had had alone time since Rachel had come home to live with them seventeen standard years ago. But not everything is idyllic and poetic.Sol would often wake up at night and walk barefoot down the hall alone, while Sarai would always be there gazing at a sleeping Rachel.At the end of a long day, when they bathed Rachel in the old enamel tub, or tucked her in when the walls shimmered pink, the kids always said, "I love being in this place. , Dad, but shall we go home tomorrow?" Sol would nod.After telling the goodnight story, singing the lullaby, kissing her goodnight, making sure she's asleep, he'll tiptoe out of the house, and then he'll hear a muffled voice—"Goodnight, swiftlet"— It came from the small body wrapped in the blanket on the bed, and he had to answer "Good night, little swift."

When Sol lay in bed with the woman he loved, breathing softly, as if asleep, he would watch the tiny moon or two of Hebron move across the rough walls, There were pale streaks on the wall, and he would have a conversation with God. Sol talked to God every night, but it wasn't until months later that he suddenly realized what he'd been doing.The thought amused him.The dialogue isn't a prayer, but an angry monologue—somewhat disjointed as it turns into a diatribe—that's an argument he has with himself, passionately; but not always with himself.One day Saul realized that the subject of these heated debates was so deep, the stakes so serious, and the ground covered so vast, that there was only one possible person he would chastise for this deficiency: God Himself.Since Sol has the concept of a personal god, he has been lying with his eyes open at night thinking about the misery of human beings and disturbing his personal life. These are completely absurd to Sol. This kind of dialogue thinking makes him Doubt your own sanity.