Unidentified Funny Objects 2

by Silverberg, Robert

  But this sudden interest in Judaism could be a blessing in disguise. The Jewish kids at Rebecca’s school all did so well. Perhaps they’ll be good influences on her. She just hoped it wasn’t another one of Rebecca’s crazy enthusiasms that she couldn’t understand.

  “Why don’t you try harder at school?” Helen asked.

  “I’m just not interested,” Rebecca said. She sat up and, keeping an eye on her mother, quietly scraped off the mud on her face, putting it into a plastic bag.

  “Most things worth doing aren’t interesting until you get good at them. You have to do the hard work first.”

  Rebecca made non-committal noises. She gathered up the mud from the bowl by her mother.

  Helen decided to change the topic. “You should spend more time with your father. One of the goals of this vacation is for him to take a more active role in your discipline. I just don’t know what to do with you.”

  “I don’t know what to say to him. I only ever hear from him when he’s arguing with you or when you tell him about my grades and he yells at me.”

  Helen felt a pang of guilt. “Aiya. That’s not how we wanted it. Your father works so hard because he loves you. You should give him a chance.”

  But Rebecca was gone already. She had gathered enough mud.

  “She’s right, you know,” God said. “Honor your father and mother. Big deal in my book. Big in Confucius’s book too.”

  “I do honor them,” Rebecca said. “I’m just tired of being a disappointment all the time. I’m not a very good Chinese daughter.”

  “There are many ways of being a good Chinese daughter,” God said. “Not just one way. Just like there are many ways of being a good Jew, even if some people think there’s only one way. Being a Jew is about being part of a family. Families aren’t perfect, but they’re always there for you.”

  “Yeah, wish my parents believed that.”

  God started to say something but stopped. He sighed to Himself.

  Rebecca went on shaping the mud. She was not a great sculptor, but since God gave her dispensation to be “rough” and liberal in her interpretation, she finished quickly.

  “What do You think?” Rebecca asked.

  “It’s very modern,” God said, diplomatically.

  The mud statue was about a foot tall. It had two very long arms, a stubby head, and eyes and a nose carved with fingernails. Rebecca had pinched tiny earflaps on either side of the head. One of the legs was longer than the other.

  “I ran out of mud.”

  The statue fell over. Rebecca blushed, and fixed the legs so that they were more even in length. Now the statue stayed upright.

  “What’s next?”

  “Now we practice calligraphy.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, God was as frustrated with Rebecca as He had been with Jonah.

  “Of all the Chinese girls, I had to be stuck with the only one who doesn’t know any calligraphy. Don’t you know how to write legibly?”

  Rebecca wiped her sweaty forehead, which was now covered by mud. “Don’t yell at me! How was I supposed to know this would come in handy? I hated brush-writing. I’ve always typed or dictated.”

  She had tried over and over to etch the Hebrew letters for emet into the forehead of the golem with a chopstick. The Children’s Guide had examples of what the letters looked like. But time and again, she failed—the proportions of the letters were wrong, the lines were squiggly, the letters ran into each other. She had to wipe out the half-formed letters and start again.

  “This is the problem with modern education everywhere. Penmanship is just not valued.”

  “Sounds like a design flaw. Why did You make writing so hard and typing so easy?”

  “Again with the blame.”

  David poked his head into the room.

  “Hi,” he said, awkwardly. The fact that his daughter’s face was covered in mud didn’t faze him. He had seen his wife often looking similar. “Your mother suggested that I take you for an ice cream on the promenade deck. If you’re free.”

  “I’m a little busy, Dad.”

  “What are you working on?” He came in and sat down on the bed.

  “Making this golem. But God is mad at me because I can’t do calligraphy.”

  Since most conversations David had had with his daughter consisted of him yelling at her at Helen’s direction for some failure on Rebecca’s part that he didn’t fully understand, this actually made some sense.

  “Your grandfather was the same way with me,” he said.

  “You didn’t like brush writing either?”

  “Hated it. I preferred to draw pictures during those classes. The teacher told my father, and I got into a lot of trouble. But I eventually learned to like it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your grandfather was good at making paper lanterns for the Lantern Festival. Back then, in China, every kid ran around with a homemade lantern for the Festival. He told me that I had to write the characters on the lanterns myself. And if my bad calligraphy ruined a lantern, he would have to start over and make me a new one. I felt so bad about making him do extra work that I practiced a lot and got really good. And then I enjoyed making the lanterns with him every year.”

  Rebecca liked that story.

  “Can you help me with the golem?” She asked.

  She showed him what the letters had to look like. He held her hand and, together, they made the letters on the forehead of the golem.

  The two stepped back to admire their work. It wouldn’t win any awards. But it was functional.

  “Thank you,” Rebecca said. “Dad, can we get ice cream another time? Right now, God has more things for me to do.”

  When David was little, he had thought he could fly. In comparison, Rebecca’s belief that she was working for God seemed far more reasonable.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  AFTER DAVID LEFT, Rebecca asked God, “Why isn’t it moving?”

  “Give it a minute. It’s still getting its bearings.”

  The golem sat up, rubbed its eyes, and stood unsteadily on its feet.

  “It worked!”

  “Now the really hard part begins,” God said. “Golems are strong but extremely stupid and literal-minded. You have to give this one very precise instructions to get it to catch all the rats.”

  Rebecca brought the golem to a little-trafficked corner of the ship. She knelt down and loosened the screws securing the grille over a wall vent. Then she opened the grille and pushed the golem inside the ventilation duct.

  “I command you to go catch a rat.”

  The golem stumbled around, looked left and then right, and went down the right side. Gradually, echoes of the golem’s footsteps faded.

  Rebecca waited.

  Five, ten, fifteen minutes passed.

  “You never told it to come back,” God said. “Remember: very literal-minded.”

  Rebecca leaned into the vent and shouted, “Come back.”

  After a moment, she stuck her head back into the vent: “With the rat!”

  “Now you’re learning,” God said.

  Within a minute, pattering footsteps approached the vent, along with loud squeaks.

  The golem appeared dragging a struggling white rat by its tail. The rat tried to dig its claws into the sides of the duct but could get no purchase against the smooth metal surfaces.

  Rebecca clapped. She directed the golem to deposit the rat inside a shoebox, which she carried back to her cabin. She released the rat in the dry bathtub, a temporary holding cell.

  “One down, a hundred forty-nine to go,” God said.

  THE NEXT EXCURSION DIDN’T go so well. The golem came back to the vent dragging another squealing rat. But five more rats followed the golem. As soon as they were sure that Rebecca could see the golem, the rats attacked together.

  They jumped onto the golem, bit through its arms to free their companion, and then turned together to face Rebecca and bared their teeth, grinning. She thought
one of them even licked its teeth and smacked its lips. Then they ran away, leaving the broken golem behind.

  Rebecca crawled in and dragged the writhing pieces of the golem out. Luckily, mud arms were easy to reattach to mud shoulders, and the golem was soon as good as new.

  “What’s in the mud?” God asked.

  Rebecca smelled the newly repaired golem. “Jujube, apples, grapes… and honey, I think.”

  “Aiya. That explains the problem. When I told you to get mud, did you think I meant ‘sweet mud?’”

  “Now you sound like my mom. ‘Go get mud! Go get mud!’ You didn’t say anything about what had to be in the mud.”

  “Are you a mindless golem? Do I have to specify everything? God’s servants show initiative!”

  “I did the best I could. Seems to me that the flaw was the lack of detailed instructions.”

  “Again with the blame.”

  “Wait a minute,” God said. “What’re you sprinkling on it?”

  “MSG.”

  “No. No no no no! I told you to use salt.”

  “But MSG is better. With this much MSG, even a rat would think twice about eating the golem.”

  “You think rats care about the health effects of MSG? When I told Noah to use gopher wood to construct the Ark, do you think he just substituted cedars? No. When I tell you to do something, you do it exactly the way I tell you. No modifications!”

  “‘Show initiative!’ ‘No modifications!’ I’m getting conflicting messages here.”

  “I get that complaint a lot. Join the club.”

  God waited as Rebecca sprinkled salt over the golem. “More, more. Lots more. Make it inedible to the rats.”

  “I’m going to get a taste of this at Passover, aren’t I? Parsley in salt water?”

  “Where do you think I got the idea? All Jews remember the taste of tears. It comes in handy.”

  NOW SOAKED IN SALT, the golem was having a much easier time fending off the attacking rats. One after another, it captured the rats and brought them back. Soon, the bathtub was filled to capacity. The rats climbed over each other. A few almost jumped out.

  “This isn’t going to work,” God said. “You need a bigger tub.”

  Rebecca decided that the best way to hold all the rats was to use the entire bathroom.

  She opened the fan vent in the ceiling of the bathroom, and ordered the golem to herd the rats towards that opening until they dropped down into the locked bathroom.

  “Whatever you do, don’t go into my bathroom,” Rebecca said to her mother and rushed off before she could ask any questions.

  “JUST ONE MORE rat to go,” God said, excitedly. “I think we’ll be able to do this.”

  The last rat was strong, fat, about the size of a cat. His black-and-white fur was getting patchy in places. He waddled a bit when he walked, but he could still put on a sprint when he needed to.

  Not for nothing was he the smartest rat on the ship. He knew that he was being herded, and he dodged the golem in the maze of HVAC ducts, refusing to go anywhere near Rebecca’s room.

  Rebecca ran through the ship, following the skittering and pounding footsteps overhead. She ran through the promenade deck, dodging couples standing by windows full of red-shifted star fields; she excused herself as she rushed into and out of a seminar room full of startled cruise passengers listening to an investment lecture; she ran up and down flights of stairs, hoping to help the golem.

  Finally, the rat decided that it was better to reveal his existence to the ship’s crew than to be captured by the lumbering, terrifying mud monster. He dropped out of one of the overhead vents and landed in the middle of the kitchen.

  Rebecca burst into the kitchen from the dining room and lunged after the rat, but he changed direction at the last minute, leapt onto a nearby stack of boxes, and jumped onto the stainless steel counter.

  The head chef, sous-chefs, waiters, and busboys stared, mouths agape. A fat rat was running loose in their kitchen; a little girl was yelling and chasing after it; and plop, a pile of mud fell out of the vent over their heads, landed on top of the counter, and stood up like a little person.

  The head chef fainted.

  “Get him!” Rebecca yelled. “I’ll cut off his retreat.” She rushed to the other end of the counter, hoping that the rat, trying to get away from the pursuing golem, would skid right into her waiting plastic bag.

  The rat kept on running towards Rebecca. But why was the rat grinning?

  In the middle of the counter was a sink, half filled with water and dirty dishes. The rat jumped right into the sink and swam across the soapy water with little effort. It climbed up the other side and turned around.

  Oh no, Rebecca thought. Water and mud.

  “Stop!” She shouted at the golem and waved her arms frantically, smacking the face of a busboy who was trying to get a closer look at the animated mud statue. “Sorry!” Rebecca glanced at the boy to be sure he was okay while still shouting instructions to the golem, “Go around! Get him on the other side!”

  The golem tried to stop, but it slipped on the soapy puddle next to the sink and fell into the water. It sank immediately.

  “What happens now?” Rebecca asked.

  “I’ve never seen this,” God said. “None of this is very orthodox, you understand.”

  The water in the sink bubbled and churned, and finally, a much wetter, more amorphous golem emerged, climbing up the other side of the sink. It now lumbered forward like a walking starfish. The water had dissolved most of its facial features, but the eyes were still vaguely there, two small pits.

  The golem paused, looked around, and went after the busboy standing by Rebecca. It passed right by the rat, chittering next to the sink, and launched itself into the air. Before anyone had a chance to react, it latched onto the startled face of the busboy, and began to punch his nose and bat him about the ears.

  “Aw! OUCH!”

  Rebecca yelled at the golem to stop, but the golem ignored her.

  “It can’t hear you,” God said helpfully. “The water’s dissolved the ears, which you should have made bigger. The last order it heard from you was ‘get him on the other side.’ Since you were looking at the busboy, the creature thought that’s who you meant.”

  Rebecca ran to help the boy. She grabbed onto the slick and soapy golem. But it was like trying to grab onto a jellyfish, her hands slipped and the golem easily slithered out of her grasp. The creature turned around and stuck out a pseudopod of mud, and punched Rebecca in the lips.

  Rebecca reeled back, seeing stars. She could taste the MSG, too. Mixed with salt and apples and grapes. And soap. Blech.

  The boy was now on the ground, rolling around and trying as best as he could to protect his face with his hands and forearms. The golem was strong and relentless. Rebecca could see bruises and swelling on the boy’s face.

  “It’s really hurting the boy,” Rebecca said. “How do I make it stop?”

  “You have to erase the aleph from the emet on its forehead,” God said. “Turn emet into met, or ‘death.’ That will stop the golem.”

  “Which one is aleph again?” Rebecca asked in a panic. “Remember I’m new at all this!”

  God groaned.

  Rebecca turned around and faced the rat, still chittering on the counter.

  “Listen,” she said. Her heart pounded. She had no idea if this would work. But God’s helpers were always creative, weren’t they? They showed initiative. She was going to be the best Chinese-Jewish helper of God ever.

  “I need your help to stop the golem. If you do this good deed, God will help you and the other rats find good homes.”

  “I will?” God asked.

  “I’m God’s helper. I can speak for Him.”

  “You can?” God asked.

  “It’ll be much better than hiding on this ship and stealing people’s table scraps,” Rebecca said.

  The rat looked at Rebecca quizzically, chittered some more, stroked his whiskers, and then lau
nched himself at the golem.

  “Good rat,” Rebecca said, and went after the golem too.

  The rat dove into the golem. The golem let go of the boy and tried to defend itself. It wrapped its limbs around the rat and squeezed, like a python. The rat squeaked and his eyes bulged out.

  Distracted by the rat, the golem couldn’t pay attention to Rebecca. She leaned in, and with the palm of one hand, wiped away the Hebrew letters on the golem’s head. Grabbing a chopstick from the floor, she wrote the Chinese character for ‘death’ in their place.

  “Good thing I can read Chinese,” God said. “And I’ve gotten used to your chicken scratch.”

  The golem stopped moving. It was just a pile of shapeless mud on the ground now.

  REBECCA SAT ACROSS THE large oak desk from the captain. In the middle of the desk was a pile of mud, the remains of the golem. The office was large and spacious, but she felt claustrophobic. She was boxed in and had nowhere to go.

  Her father sat to her left, her mother to her right, and behind her, blocking the door, stood a line of stony-faced witnesses: the head chef, sous-chefs and their staff who had to scrub the kitchen all afternoon, as well as the busboy whose eyes were swollen almost shut.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Lau,” the captain said, drumming his fingers on the smooth surface of the desk. “Your daughter has caused a great deal of trouble for Blueshift Cruise by bringing contraband creatures onto the ship. There are reasons that pets like your daughter’s rat and this exotic alien creature that wrecked my kitchen are forbidden! But she apparently thinks rules only apply to other people.”

  Rebecca silently seethed at the injustice of the accusation. There was no point in arguing. Her parents always thought she was in the wrong whenever authority figures like teachers were involved, so of course they would believe the captain. Indeed, they might even interpret her “crazy” rants about rats yesterday as evidence of her guilt. She was as good as convicted.

  The captain went on, “Now, we need to discuss the matter of compensation–”

  “Indeed, we should,” David said. “Starting with how you’re going to compensate my daughter for accusing her unjustly.”