All the Difference

by Edward McKeown

  “Don’t get your panties in a wad, dear, I was just checking.”

  “I do not wear panties,” I reply.

  “Hmnn, that’s the first personal thing you’ve ever told me about yourself.”

  “Then I will add another. Wrik and I remain networked, and I am going after him to Retief.”

  “And nothing else is moving either of you toward that planet other than his family issues?”

  “Which you know about?” I ask.

  “Of course. I knew Wrik Trigardt was Piet Wrik Van Zyle when I first met him. I suspect that only you and I know who he really is. I know he deserted his squadron, the Ncome Commando, during the final attack on the capitol by the Confederacy that suppressed the rebellion. I thought it would make him easier to handle. Probably would have, until you turned up.”

  “Do not be so sure,” I add. “The list of people surprised by Wrik is not short. I am actually on that list.”

  “Really?” she said, leaning forward. “Tell me why? I’d like to know, just for myself.”

  I regard this somewhat surprising request for intimacy with suspicion. Deveraux has always been as much threat as help. I know she would love to have me in a lab somewhere being broken down to learn the secrets of my construction, yet there is something different in her face today.

  “When we found you unconscious on the asteroid, Wrik insisted on saving you. He would not leave you. It’s the only reason you survived.”

  She purses her lips. “I suspected as much. He’s a bit-soft-hearted, our Wrik. Is that what surprised you?”

  “No. I was surprised when he came back for me. I had malfunctioned and was helpless before a Guilder with a heavy weapon. Wrik had taken you and gone for the ship. He promised to come back for me, but I did not expect him to. Logically, he should have fled as soon as he reached the ship. Instead, I was treated to the sight of a human, protected only by an unarmored space suit, armed only with a line-tossing gun for a weapon, charging back under fire for me. That was surprising.”

  “It seems to have been love at first sight.”

  “Do not mock my feelings for Wrik.”

  She shakes her head. “I wasn’t, Honey. I meant it as I said it.” She sighs. “We’re lined up on your course and overtaking you. I can be aboard in an hour.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, in honor of Wrik’s saving my plump behind, I am going to provide you with information you will want, information that may save Wrik’s life and remove a danger to the Confederacy, allowing me to kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Can you transmit this information—”

  “Hell, no. Not even over an encrypted channel. This one would cause real problems if it got out.”

  “I am secure at this end.”

  “Don’t be silly, your end isn’t what worries me, and you know it.”

  I do. “Very well, I will expedite our docking, though it strikes me that such meetings are more a factor of your love of playing spy than of practical necessity.”

  Candace grins. “Just one of the perks of the job.”

  In an hour, the Confederate light cruiser Ajax pulls alongside us, and a boarding tube joins our vessels. I inform Dusko of the meeting, but do not invite him. I will decide what he learns and when.

  Candace walks up to me slowly, wearing, as usual, clothing of expensive cut that flatters her abundant figure. She gives me a pleasant nod, which I return. I motion her to follow me into the galley where, in happier times, we all would meet. I follow the usual conventions and have placed drinks before us both as we take our places at the table. I sit, and Candace raises a glass of wine “To absent friends.”

  “To absent friends,” I repeat. I study the human. Signs of strain I had seen in her before have eased. Our efforts to save Shasti Rainhell’s grandson on the previous mission had also caused her enemies in the Interstellar Ministries to seek cover. In my estimation, it has put off the upcoming civil war by decades.

  “I’ll keep this short,” Candace says. She places some data-crystals on the table as if they were precious gems. “That’s the backup for what I am to tell you.”

  “And this concerns Wrik and Retief?”

  “Yes, but only because you’re all heading there.”

  “Please explain.”

  “Well, Sweetie, you are the state-of-the-art in artificial life and robotics. Not likely to be matched or exceeded in the foreseeable future, but the Confederacy still marches on. We’re learning a lot, I guess the mere fact that you exist tells us things are possible that we never dreamed of before.

  “You know all about the Confederate HCR series.”

  I nod. The human form combat robots are primitive though robust. Their artificial intelligence is rudimentary, and they still require a biological controller for many operations. I do not consider them living beings, as I am, but mere mechanisms, more complicated version of the crab robots.

  “I have to tell you a bit of a sad tale to catch you up. There’s a world called Ordnung, settled by a religious sect that rejects most technology. A young couple gave birth to a severely deformed child. On most Confed worlds, this would have been detected en utero and repaired or, if unrepairable, the child would have been aborted.

  “There was a Confed enclave onworld to handle interstellar relations. The child was brought there, and her life saved. The girl was named Kiala Yoder, and while the disfigurement was … very bad, there was nothing wrong with her mind.

  “She was raised in the enclave with occasional contact with her family. Yoder became a cybernetic prodigy. When she realized she might have been saved from this wretched existence in almost any other world, she went to Social Services and legally separated from her family, and was then moved to Landros IV and its cybernetics labs. Yoder became one of the top people in the field, even though she was confined to a motorized transport chair.”

  Candace sips her wine, and I do the same.

  “Someone failed to notice that with the increased intelligence, came great bitterness and sociopathic tendencies. Yoder was nineteen years old when she seized control of a sextet of the latest model HCR. She killed their controller using the HCRs, something that should have been impossible. Yet she hacked through every protection we had on the HCRs and turned them against the staff. No one knows how, but from what we have been able to put together, she came up with a way to download her human mind, at least temporarily, into the brain of one or more of the HCRs, to literally inhabit them.”

  I find the concept intriguing and unsettling.

  “She stole a small courier and, after disposing of the crew, disappeared into space. Since then she’s appeared in various places working for forces unfriendly to the Confederacy with her little army. She calls herself Lilith now. God knows why. I don’t believe she has any real agenda, just money and resources to keep her team going and to stay free of the Confederacy. We’ve never been able to stop her and lost a lot trying.

  “The last Intel we have on her is that she fled an ASAT strike team, headed for Retief. She doesn’t know about you, but she knows that you and Wrik are Confed intelligence.”

  A frisson of fear strikes me. “Then she will assume that Wrik is—”

  “—after her. She’ll also assume that, if he’s there, you are as well. That you just snuck onworld.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, Little Miss Metal,” she concluded, draining her glass. “Wrik has chosen the worst possible moment to visit his hometown. His best hope is that, knowing him, he will try to make his entry on Retief quietly. I doubt he will go back under his original name. He’s probably hoping no one on Retief has heard of Wrik Trigardt and the discovery of the Lost Colony. But while Retief is the galactic equivalent of East Cupcake, the name Wrik Trigardt will be known to Lilith. If no one else on that planet knows who Wrik Trigardt is, or what he’s done offworld, she will.”


  “It appears,” I say, “that we have an identicality of interests. If you are correct and this Lilith is on Retief, she is likely to detect Wrik Trigardt’s presence on the planet. I would be monitoring the manifests of any vessel visiting the planet; given what you have said of her hacking abilities, she will likely be able to do the same. There is not much shipping traffic to Retief in any event and fewer passengers.”

  “Confed keeps a pretty small footprint there as well,” Candace nods, “part of the political deal to show that, so long as they stopped discriminating against Confed members, we didn’t care how they run the little shithole. So we would have neither the skills to detect, or cope with, Lilith locally. I’m sending an ASAT raider force to Retief. I was going to send word by courier, but frankly you’ll be there about as fast as the courier and weeks before the ASAT team can get there. I could jump the Ajax there but this fight will be on the ground. All the cruiser has is a small force of Marines on board. Besides, she had another mission, too many fires and not enough firemen lately.”

  “There will be no need for the ASAT raider or the Ajax,” I say. “If this Lilith is on Retief, then she constitutes a threat to Wrik, and by extension, his family. I will neutralize her. The Cosmic Dust stopped at Arikasi en route to Retief; at our best speed and going directly, we should arrive four to seven days after Wrik.”

  Candace looks at me. “Officially, the request is to arrest the human body of Kiala Yoder, and destroy or capture the sextet of HCRs. Off the record, I do not see you taking the little sociopath alive. She’s killed seventeen people so far, probably a good deal more. I can’t risk her going over to the Solari, or even the Voit-Veru.”

  “Understood. She will be eliminated if she is there.”

  “You seem pretty confident. You sure you don’t want me to send the raider force?”

  “You fear hubris on my part. Sensible, but not the case, I am an extremely efficient and deadly fighter. In any event, the raider force would only be useful if it came to large-scale open combat. I believe we both would prefer the matter handled more surgically.”

  Candace nods. “Ok, Little Miss Metal. You have it your way to start.”

  “Excellent. Terms of payment will be the same as those for the Lost Colony Expedition.”

  “Hah!” Candace says. “You were going anyway, and it’s your boyfriend’s butt you’re saving.”

  “True, but I need only save Wrik, which I can do by removing him, forcibly if needs be, from the danger zone. You propose that I attack six of your best fighting machines and a genius level hacker, and ask that I do so with minimal loss of Confed lives and property.”

  “Preferably no losses,” Candace grumbled.

  “That’s implied.”

  “Looks like Wrik finally did teach you about commerce.”

  “My budget for batteries necessitated that.”

  Candace barks a laugh. “I like you Maauro. The galaxy will always be full of surprises with you in it. Ok. You have a deal. Now get out there and save everybody’s asses. I’m heading back to civilization.” She rises and gives me a wave. “I’ll show my ownself out.”

  As soon as we decouple from the Ajax, I kick our thrust up by the additional 2.45098 percent that is prudent. Every second now counts.

  Chapter 4

  Having escaped the attention of press and government both, though I wasted the day to do it, I rented an aircar at a horrible rate, for an indefinite period and wasted no time getting out of the capitol. I left the flying to the autopilot, despite my usual reservations. In my present state of nerves, it seemed the safer course. The sky turned a deep purple as I headed for the interior. Katic and Derby, two of Retief’s five small moons, rolled through the sky over me, their cool, silvery light causing the stars of the night sky to fade then brighten as they rolled toward the horizon. I was alone with thoughts that filled the small cabin, memories of the life that I had fled. I slept fitfully in the pilot seat; dreams making me twitch and sweat.

  The sun came up and made the endless grasslands below the silver prow of the aircar glow. It was late summertime and would be hot in the fields below. Humanity’s hand lay lightly on the land. The few roads led to isolated homesteads and small towns. But there were more of those then I remembered, and the roads were better.

  Maybe it would have been smarter to spend a few days getting used to my old home, but I wanted to get this over with as soon as I could. I landed in what had once been the tiny town of Sethotho. It had changed from little more than a crossroad to small city of about 50,000 people.

  I grabbed as much breakfast as my knotted stomach would allow in a small diner. Then I rented a scooter and headed up the roads to the farm. Despite the heat, I was grateful for my jacket, brimmed hat, and goggles. At first I sped down a broad highway then an improved road and finally tar and chip surfaces. When I was a child, the roads here were packed dirt and almost impassible in the rainy seasons. What else had changed?

  Vehicles of various sorts passed me, many occupants waving in the easy way of country folk, but I could see curious glances under broad brimmed hats or caps. Most people out this far knew each other, or would recognize each other’s vehicles. A stranger was a curiosity.

  I came to the final turn off to the farm. I stopped and tried to calm my pulse and slow my breathing. Sweat beaded on my shirt under the jacket. My ears buzzed, my mouth was dry, and a feeling of unreality gripped me. Where was I? What was I doing? I stared out at the fields loaded with grain, backed by trees to break the endless winds.

  Finally resolve came to me and with it, a sense of peace. I had come for this. Though I had no hope, no expectation that anything good would result; it was the hell I had to slog through to reach the Promised Land beyond. Freed from my fugue, I started the bike and rode down the lane. It was as I had remembered it, with no change or alteration I could see. I saw places that I’d played and explored with my sister, or Delt, my childhood friend and later squadron commander: trees we had climbed, a pile of rocks that had served as our fortress as we stood off imaginary Solari raiders. Then the house came into sight, green with its white roof. I stopped the bike at the base of the drive and dismounted.

  As I started up the path to the farm, I studied my old home. The house, shaded by trees, had few modern touches to it, but the outbuildings were loaded with the latest farm machinery and with their modular construction, stood as odd contrasts to the old house, built by a first-landing family. It appeared my father had bought out some of the smaller outlying farms and now had a major agricultural holding.

  My feet raised dust on the crushed blue stone of the road up to the house. Memories flooded in: the taste of cherry pie in the fall, the smell of the jasmine-like flowers Mom loved, Rena and I playing by the stream that fed the fire pond. As I walked on, lost in the past, my eyes fell on the family plot that lay under a spreading ponkia tree. There lay my father’s ancestors from the first landing to grandfather Pasen, a stern, taciturn, old farmer. But one marker stood, fresher than the others, near the back.

  I knew what it was, but I had to see it with my own eyes. I opened the small, creaky gate and walked in carefully, avoiding stepping on the graves until I stood in front of a simple, gray stone. It held only a name, my name Piet Wrik Van Zyle and two dates. My birthday and the day of the air battle over Retief.

  “No turn unstoned, huh, father?” I’d expected this, but it still hurt like a knife.

  I turned my back on the headstone and headed for the house, determined to get this over with. A minute’s more walk brought me to the porch. In the distance I could see some men working on a big, red, farm machine, but none of them were my father.

  Then I was facing the door, and I knew I could not ring that bell. You can’t blow it now, I thought, not after you’ve come all this way.

  I was spared the struggle when the porch door swung open, and my father walked out, heavier now,
graying at the temples and wearing the bushy beard favored by a lot of the Rebels. He wore a hunting jacket and field trousers, and stopped when he saw me, squinting in suspicion, then his eyes widened for a moment.

  I was surprised by the changes in my father, and had to remind myself that I had been gone twelve years, for all that I had only lived five of those years, two being spent in cold sleep, and five in the wrinkle in time that had hid the Infestor Artifact. I didn’t look much different from when he had seen me last, the night he had told me I was dead to him.

  We stared at each other. I found I couldn’t say the word, Father, so I began simply. “I’m back.”

  He looked down at the ground, and I wondered what he was feeling. I didn’t have to wait that long. My father walked two steps to a rocker and sat down in it, facing away from me. “I didn’t ask you to come back. I’m glad to see you’re not dead for others, but it means nothing to me. I said all I had to say to my son twelve years ago.”

  What did I expect? I thought. Hot and cold chills ran through me, and I felt faint. I shook it off.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

  He stared at me and, for a second, I wasn’t sure he was going to answer. “Your mother left not long after you did.”

  I was tempted to say, good for her, but restrained myself. I could hear rustling in the kitchen. “That my sister?”

  “No,” Dad answered. “I remarried.”

  “I see. Do you know where Mom is?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll find her.”

  The silence lengthened.

  “Not going to ask about your sister?” he said. There was a blade concealed in the question. My younger sister, Rena, had turned on me as hard and fast as any. We’d never been close as children— she’d been my mother’s project as I had been Dad’s, and what lay between us has never been a familial feeling.

  “No. She did without a brother for most of our childhood. She doesn’t need one now that she’s grown.”