Page 30 - Tales the Maggid Never Told Me

The Golem of NASA

hierarchical calculus. God’s transaction with the Jews had been a
simple quid pro quo, so Gabe Solomon believed: stripped of its ritual
paraphernalia, the covenant traded allegiance to heavenly
commandments for heavenly protection. But Gabe could not accept
the yoke of moral obligation such a deal implied. If Jews had to break
Commandments to protect themselves, then God would understand
and not withdraw His blessings. Did not God’s choice of the
Jews mean that they must survive—at all costs? Hadn’t they
been victims long enough? Gabe had been stirred by the early
military victories of Israel, and dismayed at its later setbacks and
political problems.
As an intelligence community insider, he was well aware of the
interpenetration of Israeli and American interests, the uneasy alliance
linking a network of shadowy forces in both countries with their
counterparts in places like South Africa, Iran, and El Salvador.
Friends and enemies both came from the same pool of talent—spies,
arms dealers, soldiers of fortune, oil barons, colonels on the edge of
rebellion, scientists building forbidden weapons, editors and
publishers of influential newspapers. And all were in the Agency’s
files, accessible to any queries permitted by CERBERUS. Gabe saw
himself in the role of hero, silently doing battle to protect his people.
But the assassination left his self-image severely cracked and
tarnished. General Khazak had been his ideal, a strongman
demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, from his
adversaries. Now he, Gabe, had usurped God’s power to dispense
punishment, and the wrong man had died. Khazak’s opponents in
Israel would seize the opportunity to appease the enemy, make
concessions, sue for peace. All because the golem couldn’t make the
right kind of distinction. God knew who to smite; maybe man
could figure it out, with a margin of ambiguity; but a machine,
devoid of any feelings, driven by rigid imperatives, unable to
grasp larger issues of history and destiny?
Hoping the golem had committed a single aberrant
computation, Gabe typed in a request for a short list of top-
scoring victims:

target(1..5)?

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