A World of Difference

by Harry Turtledove

  “Make sure she eats something,” Sarah told Irv. He thought about asking her whether she was speaking as doctor or Jewish mother, but keeping his mouth shut seemed smarter. A nod couldn’t land him in trouble, but his big mouth had, many times already.

  Sarah headed for the castle, pausing once to wave before she trudged on again. “Come on,” Irv said to Pat. Again there was that delayed response, but less this time than before. She followed him to Athena.

  Emmett Bragg met them just inside the airlock.” ‘Bout time somebody showed up here,” he grumbled. His pistol was belted on; Irv would have bet he had been pacing the corridor. “Don’t want to leave the ship empty, and I need to go out and scout the route the Skarmer’ll be using when they finally decide to get moving again. Won’t be long now, I suspect.” “Where’s Louise?” Irv asked.

  Bragg’s eyes flicked to Pat. “She’s-out,” he said. Irv thought unkind thoughts about his mouth as he remembered Louise was out because she was doing some seismographic work that would-should-have been Frank’s. Pat, luckily, didn’t make the connection.

  “Don’t get too close to the Skarmer-or to Oleg Lopatin,” Irv said. “Don’t forget you’re our ride home.”

  Emmett grimaced. “Don’t remind me. I know I have to be a good boy, but I don’t have to like it.” He hurried out through the airlock, not bothering to hide his impatience to be gone. Things had been dull for him since Athena landed, Irv thought; Air Force pilots were adrenaline junkies from the word go. Well, Emmett had his fix now.

  Irv turned back to Pat. “Let’s see what we can find to eat.”

  “All right,” she said indifferently.

  The freeze-dried beef stew, Irv thought after he poured hot water into the package, tasted almost like what mother used to make, but not quite. He’d been eating it for so long that he had trouble defining the difference, but he knew it was there. Real food was one of the things he looked forward to about going home.

  He rinsed the plastic tray, tossed it in the trash. Pat had only pushed her food around; hardly any of it was gone.

  “Come on. Eat,” Irv said. He felt as if he were coaxing a reluctant toddler.

  Pat took a couple of forkfuls, then put the package of stew down. “I don’t feel much like eating. I don’t feel much like anything.” She would not look at Irv; she kept her eyes on her hands in her lap.

  “You really should, Pat. We need you-“ He hesitated. “as strong as you can be.” He hated himself for that little pause. Even more than the polite words it had been intended to replace, it called attention to what had happened.

  Pat didn’t answer… For a moment, Irv thought she was disconnected from the here-and-now again. Then he saw her shoulders shaking, saw two tears splash onto the backs of her wrists before she jerked up her arms to cover her face.

  She hadn’t cried before, not when Irv was there to see it and not, so far as he knew, any other time, either. “That’s right,” he urged, standing next to her. “It’ll help you feel better. It’s all right.”

  “It’s not-all right.” A gasped, hitching breath broke the sentence in half. “It’s never going to be all right.”

  What do I say to that, Irv wondered, especially when it’s true. Except for two of his grandparents, he had never lost anyone he loved. He knew how lucky he was. Because he was so lucky, he did not know firsthand how Pat felt, but he knew it was bad- worse now, he supposed, because she was letting what she had blocked away come out.

  He bent down on one knee and put an awkward arm around her. She started to shake him off, then twisted in the chair until her head found the hollow of his shoulder. His other arm wrapped around her. Her tears were hot on the side of his neck. He held her while she cried herself out.

  She looked ghastly when she finally raised her head-all the more so in the harsh blue-white glow of the fluorescent tube in the ceiling. Her blotched, wetstreaked face reminded Irv again of the toddler he had thought about a few minutes before. But the feel of her against him was like no toddler’s.

  He shook his head at the distracting thought and reached out and snagged a paper towel off the tabletop. “Here,” he said. “Blow.”

  Pat did, noisily, and dabbed at her eyes. “Thank you,” she said, and then again, in a different tone of voice, “Thank you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  He was still holding her with one arm. When he started to pull back, she clung to him. “Don’t let go, not yet, please,” she said. “I wasn’t, haven’t been able to feel anything since-“ Irv thought she was going to let that hang, but she made herself go on. “-since Frank got killed. It’s like most of me’s been stuck inside a glass specimen jar. I see things, hear things, but they don’t connect, they just bounce off the glass. This-I really know you’re here with me.”

  “Okay.” That was one way of dealing with shock, Irv knew.

  If nothing got through the glass, nothing could hurt.

  “Give me that paper towel again, would you?” Pat wiped at her face, crumpled the towel, and threw it away. “I must look like hell.”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  She let out a strangled snort that might have been-Irv hoped it was-the first laugh from her since her husband died. “You always say the sweetest things, Irv.”

  “I try.”

  He kept his tone deliberately light, but Pat’s reply was serious. “I know. Thanks one more time.” She held on to him, too, as if afraid to stop. “So good to feel something, anything, again.”

  “Good. That’s good, Pat.” Irv’s brain was handling mixed signals. Consciously, he was glad he was able to do as a friend should, able to help Pat begin to accept her loss. Through his hands, through his skin, he picked up another message. He was very much aware that for some time he had been holding a woman in his arms.

  More than anything else, he was annoyed with his physical response to that. Not the time or place, he thought. For a crazy moment, he felt seventeen again, walking from class to class with his books held awkwardly in front of him to hide an incongruous erection.

  The Pat leaned close and kissed him on the cheek. It was not meant to be a passionate kiss; thinking back later, Irv was sure of that. Nor was the one he intended to give back. But instead of her cheek, his mouth found hers. With a sound half sigh, half groan, she clutched him to her.

  There must have been some time in the minutes that followed when their lips were separated long enough for Irv to say no or stop or something of the sort. Afterward, that seemed logically certain, but he never could figure out when it might have been. Even when they were helping each other pull off boots and trousers, their mouths stayed glued together, and his still covered hers and helped quiet her moan soon after. A moment later, he made noises of his own and was similarly muffled.

  Coming back to himself was nothing like the afterglow he cherished. It felt more like breaking a fever: what had just ended seemed strange and unreal, as if it had happened to someone else. But Pat’s smooth thighs still gripped him; he still looked into her face from only a couple of inches away.

  I’m sorry, was the first thing that occurred to him to say. That, he knew, was wrong. He levered himself with his arms and pushed off against the floor so he sat back on his knees. “I think we’ve been stupid,” he said slowly.

  Pat sat up, too, and reached for her pants. “You’re probably right,” she said as she started to put them on. “This isn’t like the last time I-wanted you, though. I didn’t expect it to happen. I didn’t even particularly want it to happen. It just did.”

  “Yeah,” Irv said. He started getting dressed, too. “t know.” And what the hell am I going to do about it, he wondered. At the moment, he had no idea. “I didn’t expect it to happen, either. I was just trying to comfort you, any way I could-“ He pulled on socks. One didn’t fit. It was Pat’s. He tossed it to her.

  She was nodding. “mand God knows I was looking for comfort, any place I could find it. You want to call it shared battle fatigue or something, and
let it go at that?”

  “That might be the best thing to do.” That way, Irv thought, we can pretend-I can pretend-it never happened at all. He wished it never had happened at all. Wishing did just as much good as usual.

  “Okay,” Pat said. “I know what you were trying to do. Maybe you even did it. I guess I have to make myself go on, figure out how to go on, without Frank.” She stood up. “Right now, I’m going off to the john for a minute.” Irv winced. Pat saw it. “All right,” she said, “I won’t talk about it anymore. But this once, happening like it did, wasn’t the same as it would have been a lot of other ways.”

  “Yeah,” Irv said. He watched Pat walk out, then climbed into a chair. What she said was true. It even helped. Trouble was, it didn’t help enough.

  He got up, looked at himself in the glass of the microwave’s door. It wasn’t much of a mirror, but he doubted he could look at himself in much of a mirror. “Stupid,” he told his reflection. It didn’t argue with him.

  He heard the airlock doors open, first the outer, then the inner. “Anybody home?” Sarah called. Irv was not an adrenaline junkie. The sound of his wife’s voice almost made him jump out of his skin. “Anybody home?” Sarah said again.

  “Back here,” he answered. His voice, he thought, came out as a hoarse croak. He discovered another reason why he hadn’t cheated on Sarah before: he didn’t seem to be very good at it.

  Sarah came walking down the passageway. “What took you so long?” she asked, sticking her head into the galley.

  “Sorry.”

  She shrugged, took off her gloves, rubbed her hands together.

  “I’m going to make myself some coffee. Want any?”

  Maybe he was only imagining how he sounded; Sarah didn’t seem to notice anything wrong. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Sarah put two cups of water in the microwave. Pat came in. Sarah glanced up. Irv waited for the world to fall to pieces. Sarah said, “In. I’m making coffee. Shall I put another cup in for you?”

  “Would you?” Pat said. “I could use some.”

  “Sure.” Sarah filled a third cup. The microwave started its soft whir. Over it, Sarah said to Pat, “You sound a little better.”

  Pat nodded. “I think maybe I am, finally. I’ve got to-we all have to-get on with things, no matter what’s happened. I’m sorry I’ve been so useless. I just… needed some time, I guess.”

  “Of course you did,” Sarah said. The microwave chimed. She got out the boiling water, poured in instant coffee, passed around the cups. “Here you go, folks, caffeinated mud. Real coffee is another thing I’ll want lots of when we get home.”

  “Amen,” Irv agreed. “Could be worse, though-don’t the Russians have instant tea?” The idea of that drew groans from everyone.

  “How’s Lamra?” Pat asked.

  “You are better,” Sarah said, sounding pleased. “That’s the first time in a good long while you’ve cared about what’s going on. As for Lamra, she’s very much herself, only more so, if you know what I mean. She has this new wooden toy runnerpest- maybe Reatur made it for her; I don’t know it that she carries around everywhere. Won’t let go of it for hell. She doesn’t try to mother it, though, the way a little girl would with a doll. Not much call for learning to be a mommy on Minerva.” That comment extinguished smiles from the faces of Pat and Irv. “Not much longer now,” Irv said.

  “No-we have to keep those clamps and bandage packs handy,” Sarah said. “We may need ‘era any time. I just hope they’ll do some good.”

  “We give it our best shot. That’s all we can do. Having Pat he did not look at her and picked his words carefully-“ feeling more like herself can’t do anything but help.” “I hope so,” Pat said.

  “Irv’s right. We might make this work yet.” Sarah looked happier at the prospect than she had for a while herself.

  Irv finished his coffee. Relief almost drowned guilt: evidently he didn’t have a large scarlet A tattooed on his forehead after all. He couldn’t forget those few incandescent minutes with Pat, but maybe, just maybe, he could convince himself they didn’t matter very much.

  And maybe he couldn’t, too. While Sarah slept quietly beside him, her warm breath sometimes tickling his ear, he lay awake himself most of the night. “A conscience is a useless piece of baggage,” he whispered. His, however, wasn’t listening. For that matter, not even the rest of him believed it.

  IX

  “They’re turning!” It was anything but the best news in the world, Reatur thought as he heard the messenger’s shout. That he had been expecting it did not make it any easier to take.

  His males heard it, too. Some peered over the barricade of ice and snow on which they had been working frantically for the last few days. The Skarmer were not yet in sight. Reatur was glad the weather was staying right around the place where ice melted, so he and the males could work with both snow and water to create a sturdy barrier against the invaders. Had it been too hot to keep snow on the ground, they would have had to try to build the rampart of earth, which would have taken impossibly long.

  The domain master poked an eyestalk over the barrier him self, turned another on Emmett beside him. “Soon we will see them,” Reatur said. “And then-”

  The human jerked the places where his arms met his body in his kind’s gesture of uncertainty. “And then we do what we do,” he said. He had less of the Omalo tongue than the other humans.

  “You will use your noiseweapon, too?” Reatur asked worriedly. It did not look like much; Emmett’s big hand almost swallowed it. But the human had demonstrated it once, with lots of Reatur’s warriors to see and hear. The roar, the flash had been much like the ones that worked such ruin on them at the edge of Ervis Gorge. “The males will be braver, knowing we can match the Skarmer.”

  “Not match,” Emmett said sharply but quietly so the warriors close by would not hear. “Skarmer weapon shoot more, shoot farther.”

  “Yes, I know that. You explained it before.” Reatur spoke as softly as the human. “But my males do not, so they will be braver. And the Skarmer do not, so they may take fright when you thunder at them.”

  “Good plan,” Emmett agreed. That pleased Reatur; no matter how weird humans were, this one seemed to know a good deal about fighting. Now he was talking into the box that carried voices. Reatur wished he understood what Emmett was saying; he had only learned a few words of human speech. Now he had to ask, “Is all well, back beyond the castle?” “All well,” Emmett said. “They wait.”

  “So do we,” Reatur said. Most times, he would sooner have acted than paused here to let the Skarmer descend on him. But if he attacked them in the open, he would be like a fat massi coming up to a male, too stupid to know it was about to be speared. The noiseweapon made that certain. Thus he waited, on ground of his own choosing.

  His warriors’ babble changed tone. The eyestalk that was looking northwest over the barrier told him why. The males emerging from in back of some gentle high ground could only be the enemy.

  Some of them stopped short when they saw the obstacle the Omalo had thrown up in their path. The Skarmer could not go around it: it stretched from one patch of woods to another. If they wanted to fight Reatur’s warriors, they would have to come straight at them.

  More and more Skarmer came out. They began to deploy, forming into fighting clusters. The Omalo yelled abuse at them, though they did not understand the local tongue and were still too far away to hear much anyhow.

  “Fralk has a funny way of arranging his warriors,” Reatur said, poking up another couple of eyestalks so he could take in the whole picture at once. “Why that gap in the center? More of his males should be there, to meet us where we are strongest. But there are only an eighteen or so.”

  With one of the eyes that wasn’t looking out at the Skarmer army, the domain master saw Emmett looking over the rampart, too. The human had a gadget over his own eyes-not the noiseweapon, but something else. “Help me see farther,” Emmett explained, lo
wering the device. “I see human there in center.” Always deep and, to Reatur, fierce sounding, his voice was frighteningly grim now.

  “A human.” After a moment’s thought, the domain master realized what that meant. “Oh. That is where the noiseweapon will be.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he doesn’t have his own males there so he won’t hit them with the stones or whatever it is that the noiseweapon spits.”

  “Yes,” Emmett said again. He made his mouth twist into the shape humans used to show amusement. Now he had his weapon again. “We give Fralk new thing to think about, yes?”

  “Yes.” The word felt good to Reatur. Fralk had been pulling him around by the eyestalks ever since the Skarmer forced their way out of Ervis Gorge. He had been reacting to what his enemy did. Let Fralk react for a change. “Go ahead, Emmett.”

  The human aimed the noiseweapon over the rampart, made it roar. Having it go off next to Reatur was like taking up residence in the middle of a thunderstorm. The domain master did not care. “See how you like it coming your way, Fralk!” he yelled.

  A flash, a boom-Fralk froze in horror. Turning four eyestalks toward Oleg, he screamed, “lbu told me they didn’t have rifles!” He was too shaken to bother with the human language.

  Oleg followed the Skarmer speech. “Not a rifle,” he answered in the same language. He also followed Fralk, literally: a guard jerked him along by a cord tied around him between his arms and head.

  “What do you mean, not a rifle?” Fralk shouted, still frantic. Flash, boom-another shot punctuated his words. With the couple of eyes that weren’t on the human, he saw his males begin to waver. They hadn’t expected the Omalo to have a weapon to match theirs.

  “Not a rifle,” Oleg repeated. “That is pistor’-a human word Fralk hadn’t heard before, but one Oleg went on to explain-“like rifle, but not as good. Not shoot so far, not shoot so fast. Not hurt us where we are here.”