All the Difference

by Edward McKeown

  “Have all the base commanders been dark-pigmented humans?”

  She smiled for the first time. “Yeah, except for one Morok. It reminds the locals who won the last dust up.

  “I just can’t understand why these people would need protection from a rebel attack force, especially Grieg Nazir. Or is that need to know as well?”

  “I’m afraid so. Simply accept that it is the case.”

  “All these people,” Kurocal continued, putting a finger to her chin, “are connected to the Van Zyle family, so killing any of them, whatever their sympathies are, would hurt Wrik Trigardt, who you obviously care for, as I believe you were quite prepared to literally to bite my head off a few seconds ago.”

  “I am capable off biting off heads,” I reply coolly “though I seldom do so as it is tactically inefficient.”

  “Yeah, I could see how that would be an issue.” Kurocal replied. “Well, protecting the old bastard, I mean—”

  “I know who you mean; it appears to be a point of nearly universal consensus.”

  This time the colonel actually chuckled. “Anyway, he will be the easiest to protect. I can land a team of weapon designators on the ground to call in airstrikes. I can do that with the Nazir residence as well, but if the family moves around…”

  “I will arrange for them to remain at the location. Nazir will not be troubled by the security and will cooperate.” Her eyes narrow at this, but she asks nothing.

  “The area near Teljard’s workshop can also be covered by airstrike and designator teams. There are occasional armored exercises out that way. I’ll schedule one immediately.

  “Eldra Trigardt’s residence will have to be covered from the sea. It’ll be hard to place troops in a small town without them being detected.

  “Understand this,” the colonel continues. “I am doing this all under a written protest. You are diverting most of my striking power into guard duty at multiple points out of supporting range of each other.”

  “Your protest is noted. Do not let it interfere with the performance of your duty. Please provide constant reports in real time on this channel on all protected persons. I will communicate periodically if there is a need.” I do not inform the Colonel that I have surveillance on all parties at all times; it is as well to keep one’s backup plan secure.

  Chapter 22

  We spent most of a week with my mother. It was a strange time; she hovered near us as if always afraid we would vanish in a puff of smoke. We went to dinner with neighbors, and I played the dutiful and repentant son. The story of our adventures off-world had caught up to us, and we turned down interviews and appearances as the local media flocked in. I had no desire to discuss our voyages, much less my pilgrimage to my home. The story of my public disgrace and court-martial were again in the news, but I felt no desire to experience any of it.

  The small town of Glen Cove, where my mother was well-liked, closed protectively around us. Reporters found locals unwilling to rent to them and unreliable as sources of information. They also found themselves plagued by all manner of technical failures brought on by Maauro and her ability to infiltrate.

  Toward mid-week with reporters still buzzing about like flies, we headed out on a forty-foot sailboat named Flounder Pounder, loaned to us by a gentleman named Lorcar, who I suspected had an interest in my mother, something I found myself decidedly of mixed minds about.

  I had enough to worry about with my own love life. Lorcar’s daughter, Maravic, was about my age and decided to show me about the boat in bikini bottom and sweatshirt. She had a tanned, athletic body and long, blonde hair in a simple style. Her face was open and friendly and I found myself eyeing her, despite my resolve to just study the boat. As we walked back onto the dock, I saw Maauro looking us both over, her face carefully neutral. I wondered if she’d spotted me looking at Maravic.

  The voyage out to sea was not a long one. We wanted to be just out of sight of land. With Maauro aboard, we had no worries about either being lost, or surprised by the weather. Maauro enjoyed the boat most of all, fascinated by the interplay of wind and sail. Mom cooked, and I helped Maauro with the boat, though I suspected help was an overstatement.

  As for my new-found love and I, we were a teenage girl’s dream of romance, plenty of time together, warm kisses and a lot of holding hands. Perhaps it was good the water was cold so often. The presence of my mother onboard was also a deterrent to any experimentation. So, we were in our own little limbo, largely content just to be with each other, but gathering ourselves for whatever the way ahead for two such different life forms held. It was perhaps unfair, but it seemed like it was more my issue than hers. I thought Maauro was content to have things stay the way they were forever, but then it occurred to me that she too, might just be afraid. I at least knew what sex was, and how it was a part but not the whole of love. Her knowledge was purely theoretical.

  One other thing troubled our ocean idyll. I had a sense of my life changing or readying itself to be changed. Yet the detritus of my old life hadn’t been completely resolved. I had yet to face the survivors of my squadron. Once, I had dreaded this encounter, now I found myself growing impatient to be done with it, to clear away the remains of Piet Van Zyle and get back to my existence as Wrik Trigardt, to cease, for once, being broken.

  So when Ruatha called us and advised that the reporters and curiosity seekers had departed, I went on deck to find Maauro at the tiller.

  She watched me come toward her. Spray from the ocean waves struck her, but she ignored it in a way no human could. “You have a certain facial expression that always tells me when you have set your mind to something,” she said.

  I nodded, joining her in the Flounder’s cockpit. “I want to have done with the reason I came. It’s time to see the rest of them, those who are willing. Delt has had enough time to round up everyone who’ll come. I’ll call him—”

  “No. I will make the call. It will be more secure.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Reporters,” she said.

  “Of course.” I again found myself wanting to joke, ‘I hope you won’t be so bossy after we are married,’ but that was a tale for the unknown country ahead and perhaps not the safest topic.

  “What will you tell your mother?” Maauro asked.

  “Only the truth.”

  “Would that it were always so easy to do so.”

  I was a little surprised by this pensive mood in Maauro, for all she had been more often quiet and introspective since we’d arrived. I knew she had so much to think on.

  I put my arms around her. “Am I thinking enough about you in all of this? Am I paying enough attention? Am I there enough for you with all you’re going through, for the first time in a life of over 50,000 years?”

  She looked at me in surprise, then gave one of her rare laughs. “You are the most attentive and patient of boyfriends. But I…” For the first time in my recollection, words seemed to fail Maauro.

  “I,” I picked up where she had paused, “will wait for you for as long as I need wait.”

  She placed her face against my chest and her arm across my back, and I knew I would not trade my place with her for anything else the universe could offer. We sat that way as the clouds scudded overhead, and the boat bounced on waves. Finally she looked up at me.

  “Let’s turn for home, Maauro.”

  She manipulated sheets and rudder with blinding speed and certainty, and we turned to run before an onshore wind. My mother popped her head out, saw the two of us seated, arms about each other and ducked back into the cabin.

  We ate a final meal aboard Flounder Pounder, one of Mom’s best and talked of inconsequential things. Maauro had the boat on automatic as she invariably took meals with us, determined to live the part as much as she could.

  We landed late in the evening, avoiding any lingering media. I asked Mom to let Lorcar
know the boat was back. This was so I would avoid getting another eyeful of Maravic, which was probably not good for me. I didn’t need any further complications, and I didn’t want Maauro to detect any reaction I might have to her. I sighed. Having a girlfriend with a full set of sensors, able to register everything from my blood pressure to respiration, was going to be difficult.

  We got back to Mom’s home late and turned in. Morning came, and we woke to the smell of breakfast and coffee wafting up the stairs. I suspected that Mom hadn’t slept much, knowing we were leaving in the morning.

  “Go down to your mother,” Maauro said. “I’ll pack our things and come down in a little bit. I’m sure she would like some private time with her son.”

  I nodded and threw on my robe and headed down. Mom sat at a set table. She was fully dressed and, even for a morning person, this seemed a lot. She smiled as I came down, but there was a shadow to it.

  “Good morning, son.”

  “Morning.”

  “Isn’t Maauro joining us?”

  “She said she’ll be down in a minute.”

  I slid into a seat facing covered dishes on warmers and a pile of cinnamon buns and biscuits. “Is there an army joining us for breakfast?”

  Mom gave an embarrassed smile. “Well, you can take some with you, and Maauro will love the cinnamon buns.”

  I reached for the coffee pot. Mom was having some fragrant tea in a delicate cup. A pottery mug had been left for me. I filled it with coffee, cream and sugar and took a sip. “Ah, now I start to feel human.”

  “Good,” Mom said.

  “Don’t look so worried,” I added quietly.

  She nodded. “I know. I guess I knew you would have to leave again, but it brings up the question of when I will see you again?’

  “Retief isn’t my home, Mom. I didn’t intend to return to stay. Truth be told, I’m not sure I thought much beyond seeing everyone. But I can promise you that I’ll come back to see you before I, before we, go anywhere.”

  “I can’t help but worry about you. It’s a dangerous life you’re leading.”

  Unable to resist, I reached for a cinnamon bun. “As you have seen, I have pretty good protection with me.”

  Mom grimaced. “It just seems to me that you are put up against larger and more awful dangers.”

  “Well, I’m not sure if I chose this life or it chose me. Maybe it’s because I am me, with all my personal oddness that I need to do these things.”

  “And what of the future?”

  “I’m rarely able to see very far into it.”

  “Learn, son, learn. And not only for your own sake. You’re in something that I don’t believe anyone can advise you about. I like her, and I won’t say a word against her, not that you’d hear it if I did, but I do like her—”

  “But you’re worried and concerned about the life I will have with her?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Not enough to turn aside.”

  “Well then, you need to do a better job of keeping your eyes on your own page, son. If I noticed you noticing Maravic, she did too.”

  “Damn,” I said, putting down my cup. “Was my tongue hanging out?”

  Mom gave a small laugh. “I’m not accusing you of being anything other than a normal boy…well, man, but I don’t want to imagine a jealous android and you...”

  “I don’t think it works that way for her.”

  Mom raised an eyebrow as she sipped some tea. “If I were you, I wouldn’t test that theory.”

  “Wasn’t planning to.”

  “Men seldom plan it.”

  I was grateful to hear Maauro’s footsteps on the staircase behind us. “Do I smell cinnamon,” she called.

  “Plenty left,” Mom answered. “I was going to smack Wrik’s hand if he reached for another.”

  “Which he won’t,” Maauro said, pulling back a chair, “so long as eggs of any sort and bacon are available.”

  Mom nodded. “You know him well.”

  To my surprise, Maauro looked like she was blushing, “Not so well as I hope to in the future.”

  This time, Mom laughed, and I blushed. I covered it by taking a double helping of eggs and bacon then snagging a biscuit. Maauro reached for the cinnamon buns and asked for some of the tea. Mom seemed charmed that she wanted some and explained at length about the herbs involved. A bright and light conversation followed and the sun-washed room remained amiable and peaceful. It was a moment to treasure, one to lock away in one’s heart against worse days and longer separations. I looked around the room at the furniture and painting, at my smiling mother and Maauro, who seemed very content as well, perhaps enjoying the sense of being in a family.

  As I chased the last of my eggs with a biscuit, my mother set down her cup. “When do you want to leave?”

  “No rush,” I said. “We’ll fly back to Delt’s in the evening. It will give us some time to enjoy the beach.”

  We packed a picnic lunch and walked out to the bluffs further north. The day was cool and breezy, so none of us brought bathing suits. I’d bought a kite in town, and we assembled it, flying it over the cliffs, to Maauro’s evident delight. Ship’s passed in the distance, and the occasional aircraft passed over, cutting silvery contrails. We made the lunch extra large as we planned to leave before nightfall, and I felt going back to the house for dinner would be merely awkward.

  Maauro and my mother went off to collect some flowers, and I knew that from the amount of time they spent, it was merely cover for a serious conversation about life, love and the future. Or perhaps it was just about flowers. I didn’t know, and I suspected that I wouldn’t get an answer if I had the bad taste to ask.

  We walked back late in the afternoon. It was a quiet walk, with everyone lost in their own thoughts. When we reached Mom’s house, she and I stood on the porch while Maauro went inside to get our bags.

  My mother turned to me. “I can’t tell you what these last days have meant to me.”

  “Nor to me. Not only for clearing away the rubble of the past, but for finally laying down some bricks for the future.”

  “You’ve made a good start, son. And now you have help.” She hesitated. “And I have what I needed most, forgiveness for my failure.”

  “No more talk about the past,” I said, my own voice tight. “And I want to see you taking better care of yourself. There are no worries about the house or money any more. Rena and I took care of that.”

  She smiled sadly. “Well, perhaps you and Rena working together is the biggest surprise of all.”

  I nodded ruefully.

  Maauro joined us on the porch, carrying all our bags in one hand with ease. Mom turned to her and held out both arms. Maauro put down the bags and walked into my mother’s embrace.

  “Look after my boy.”

  “I will with both eyes and as many sensors as I have.”

  Maauro picked up the bags as Mom turned to me. “Goodbye, son. I love you. Remember, you promised to come see me before you leave.”

  “I haven’t forgotten. Goodbye for now, Mom.”

  “Goodbye.”

  We walked down the stairs and onto the street, then we both turned and waved to my mother. I could see tear tracks on her face even through the smile. She returned our wave and then turned to go inside.

  Gravel crunched underfoot as we walked on. I’d shouldered a bag from Maauro for appearance’s sake. I couldn’t quite sort out my feelings: elation, sadness and hope warred in a confusing mélange. Suddenly I found a small warm hand in mine and an anxious big-eyed face looking up at me. I squeezed her hand reassuringly. We walked on in a comforting silence.

  Chapter 23

  We arrived at Delt’s airfield and landed the Magister after sunset. Maauro hopped out to open the hanger doors, and I taxied the little yellow plane in. I unpacked our gear from the no
se compartment, and we walked out into the cool evening. Other than the automatic systems for the field itself, the place was shut down. I did see tail lights heading toward town, perhaps we’d just missed the last few workers heading home. As we walked toward Delt’s apartments, carrying our few bags, the light blinked out a warm yellow welcome, and the door opened under my hand, doubtless Maauro had signaled the door code.

  Grateful to have reached our destination, we marched up to our room and unpacked. I brushed my teeth. Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I sighed. I was tired from the long day but I wasn’t sleepy. Fact was that the closer my emotional relationship with Maauro became, the more the lack of a physical outlet was bothering me. I knew she’d spotted me eyeing the girl by the dock and felt bad about it. Maauro had never been possessive before, and certainly the thought of an angry M-7 should give any male pause, but it was more the look of sadness on her face that bothered me. I felt as if I had let her down. Yet I couldn’t deny that, after months without sex and with the powerful feelings that surrounded us, I felt like a ground car being thrown from drive to reverse.

  When I got back to our room, I saw that Maauro had placed our mattress on the floor. She was looking out at the starlit grasslands, but turned back to smile at me. I stretched out on the floor and looked up at her, prepared to lay there until I finally fell asleep.

  In an instant Maauro’s red and black jumpsuit was gone, and she stood, her body: pale, shining and nude. I’d seen her like this only once before, on the floating city of the gas-giant Cimer. At the time I hadn’t been sure why she showed herself to me, whether it was to show how different we were, or how similar. I did notice that her small high breasts now had nipples and a navel lay shadowed on her belly. I felt a wave of desire wash over me but didn’t move, something special was unfolding, and I didn’t dare risk disturbing it.