All the Difference

by Edward McKeown

  Delt raises an eyebrow. “Cloak and dagger, huh? Sure, whatever you say.” He turns to Wrik. “Who are you tonight?”

  “I’ll remain Wrik but don’t give my last name unless you have to or someone recognizes me. The news of the Seddon expedition came in with the Cosmic Dust if not before. At some point people will realize I’m here, but hopefully not tonight.”

  “I’ll get the car,” Delt says, “looks like we’ll be early enough to help Renton set up.”

  Delt disappears around the corner of the hanger. It is not necessary for me to check on my defensive citadel in the virtualverse, my awareness of it is complete through the subroutine I have created. I have abundant capacity for my social interactions which do promise to be taxing. I place my arm on Wrik’s, and he gives me a broad grin. He is pleased with my appearance. This makes me very happy. I note that he is wearing the best of the clothes he has brought. It is a token of respect to me and to the fact that we are going to an event together.

  “I should have flowers for you, chocolates or something,” he seems embarrassed and gives a little shrug.

  “Fond as I am of chocolates and the symmetry of flowers, what is most precious to me is the fact we have these hours together.”

  “I think,” he says, “you were made with the soul of poet, Maauro. You say beautiful things.”

  I smile.

  Delt rolls his small bright red car around front.

  “Sit up front, Wrik,” I say. “It will be easier on the car if I am in the middle of the back seat.”

  “It’s only a forty-five minute drive,” Delt said, throwing the groundcar into gear with his usual abandon and roaring out of the driveway.

  “How about some music?” Wrik asks.

  “Not a lot of selection,” Delt said. “There’s country and folk but not much beyond that.”

  “You keep forgetting you have the most sophisticated and vast database in known space in your back seat, looking adorable in her little red and gold dress.”

  “Music?” Delt asked in surprise.

  “You have merely to ask, basically anything that has been recorded up until today. I can even supply a selection of music that my Creators enjoyed.”

  Wrik raised a hand. “Pass on that. It sounds a lot like cats being strangled.”

  “Oh,” Delt said, “like bagpipes then.”

  “Yeah, like that.”

  “How would we get it into the car’s deck?”

  “Why would we want to?” I ask. “I have the most perfect speakers in Confed space.”

  We drive on under the darkening sky with me playing tunes they call out. The trip takes 46.43 minutes and we pull into a field lined with bonfires and a vast tent with a flattened and packed earth floor. People are milling about, some setting up musical instruments on a raised wooden dais. Lights on poles are set for a gentle yellow glow that keeps the darkness at a comfortable distance. Many of the locals know Delt. Wrik and I hang back. Delt notices and introduces us to some of them as, “his friends Wrik and Aurelia from off world.”

  We meet Renton and the band, then parry away any questions about our past until people cease inquiring. Fortunately, if there were photos or video of Wrik on the net, no one recognized him. I had always been able to prevent anyone from videoing me, either blurring the image or substituting others. Then the bar opens and the musicians start playing some pieces to tune up and amuse the crowd. We cease to be objects of interest. Wrik leaves me momentarily to get us glasses of wine.

  An announcer mounts a podium of hay bales. “Welcome to the first Friday dance of the season. We have the Forest-Runners and Great Quack tonight, so we have plenty of great music. Let’s get the first dance going. We’ll start with a reel.”

  The dance that follows is a rather frantic affair. Danced mostly by the younger people present.

  “Good start,” the announcer says at the end, “now, let’s slow the tempo down a bit with a rumba.”

  The music starts again, and I watch the humans form pairs and begin to dance in the soft light of the bonfire and the porch lamps. They seem such gossamer and ephemeral creatures to me, yet in a way, incomparably beautiful. The pairs glide and twirl with a fluidity and a joy in movement that I am incapable of.

  I realize I am envious. My body of malleable ceramics and metals has survived almost as long as their species has— yet it feels heavy and lifeless to me as I stand at the edge of the firelight and gaze on the couples. These frail creatures of flesh and blood are only so briefly alive, so vulnerable to death, disease and disaster. Yet their brief lives are so full; they are so dynamic. I watch them and feel alien and apart. I do not breathe, and unless I am moving, I am utterly still as only the dead or inanimate can be. What real difference is there between me and the vehicles sitting in the field beyond? I belong here no more than do those machines.

  The music ends.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, a waltz,” the band leader announces. People begin to walk on and off the hard-packed soil of the dance floor.

  Movement catches my attention, Wrik is walking toward me. He has in that mysterious way of his divined that something is wrong, as there is concern on his mobile and expressive face. For all that my own betrays nothing that I do not deliberately put there, my human companion somehow sees below the surface to where, whatever it is that I am— exists. Wrik puts our drinks down on the table and extends his hand toward me. Puzzled, I take it before I realize his intention. He is leading me toward the dancing couples.

  “Wrik, what are you doing?”

  “You wanted to dance,” he says over his shoulder. “I could tell.”

  And I do. I realize it as he says it. What marvel is this? I am a quantum computer, how can Wrik know what is in my mind before I do? Again the difference between emotional intelligence and mere computing power asserts itself.

  The music has paused. Wrik and I face each other as other couples finish coming off and on the dance floor. “I fear that I do not know how. Oh, I can download the steps and reproduce them as I can download musical notes and reproduce those. But that is mere reproduction, not the same as knowing how to apply them.”

  He laughs softly and says in a low tone, “A woman who can fly though a gas giant’s storm clouds and battle Infestors hand to hand? Come now, this will be child’s play for you.”

  I feel a warmth that is neither physical, nor locatable, yet is there. He calls me a woman and sees me as such, for all that he knows better. Wrik has treated me as a living person from our first moments together, unpromising and frightening as those moments were.

  “Wrik, I weigh over 500 pounds if I step on your toes—”

  “Then don’t,” he replies, still smiling.

  Wrik reaches his left hand out to take my right, and his other one rests on my back. Some people nearby notice us and smile. I see Delt watching from the side, surrounded by a crowd of friends. He is intent on us, but I cannot read his expression

  We begin. I confine myself to carefully following Wrik as he starts leading me through the simple, yet elegant rhythm of the waltz. The music is gentle, and we join the revolving line of dance as it winds through the yard. My task is a complicated one. I respond to the gentle pressure of his hands on me while simultaneously analyzing the ground below, stepping as lightly and quickly as I can on the firmest soil. I do not wish to sink into or tear up the ground, betraying my true nature. I track the vectors of all the couples moving around us. Some bump or brush and I cannot risk such accidental contact for fear of injuring someone.

  Yet this all occupies the smallest percentage of my processing power. With the rest of my perception, I enjoy the quiet happiness that suffuses me. I am dancing with Wrik at a party, surrounded by and now part of the world of living things. It is very wonderful.

  We glide and dance and I wish it would go on forever. With each step, I become more in tune with Wrik
’s movements and less fearful of a misstep. Too soon the music stops.

  “Well, if everyone picked it up so fast,” Wrik says, “there’d be no market for dance instructors.”

  “The steps are simple, but the application of them is subject to vast variation and complexity. Still, it is like the flight of wingleader and wingman; I need only stay in close formation.”

  He grins. “Never heard it put that way before, but I suppose you’re right.”

  “How is it that you are so good at this and I had no knowledge of that?”

  The cloud that always touches his face at the mention of his past briefly appears but is quickly dispelled. We are submerged in his past here. “Mom loved dancing; she paid for lessons. My father thought it was a waste, but it was one of the times he let her have her way. I wasn’t very good, but I practiced a lot. I guess the feet still remember, at least for the slow ones.”

  “Oh, I hope they play another slow one,” I say. “I do not think I can dance quickly on this surface without damaging it.”

  “Ladies and gentleman,” the band leader says from his podium of hay bales, “We’ve had a request: a slow waltz. What we used to call, when I was young, so very long ago, a sweetheart waltz.”

  I see Delt walking away from the musicians. He catches my eye and to my surprise, he winks at me. He has arranged this. I am grateful. I must remember this kindness.

  “Ah,” Wrik says. “It appears your wish is granted.”

  We enter into hold again and dance. There is a change in this dance. The couples seem more involved with each other as they move, more aware, looking more at each other and less at the field of dancers.

  I notice that Wrik and I are dancing slower and closer.

  “Wrik?”

  “Yes?”

  “Am I your sweetheart?”

  “Yes, Maauro, you are.”

  We dance on in happy silence until the music ends, the couples applaud. Wrik and I move to the edge of the circle of firelight as the couples change to a quick local folk dance that we wisely decide to pass on. Still it is pleasant to watch; there is almost a lulling effect to the rhythmic swaying of the bodies.

  I notice that Wrik is watching me closely. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” he says after a moment. “I’m just beginning to realize how right something is.” He reaches his arms about me in an embrace, but it is not our usual display of affection. He tilts my head back with a gentle finger under my chin, then his lips are on mine. There is something vastly different in this embrace—unfamiliar and powerful feelings surge through my mind.

  But my body is the problem, my powerful, almost indestructible and practically immortal body. A human woman’s body would respond to her lover’s kiss with arousal, the eyes would dilate, the skin grow warm and pink as capillaries expand, other parts of her body would tighten or swell with an increased blood flow. All these things I can mimic, but they do not arise from my body, but in orders from my brain. If my respiration quickens, it is not from any need, but from my desire to sound ‘’right” in my camouflage as a biological life form. The pretense can only go so far.

  And yet, as he holds me, his lips pressed on mine, his body held ever so carefully in my arms, I know that I am happier then I have ever been. Something new and unprecedented has occurred. We are no longer the dance of three. We are a pair now, only in orbit of each other.

  His lips leave mine, though his arms stay wrapped around me. “I guess it’s time to stop pretending this isn’t what it so clearly is. I love you, not just for the friend you have been, but for you. For the fact that any day that does not have you in it will be a dark one for me—you’re the irreplaceable part—the face I need to always see.”

  If I had a heart, it would be thudding in my breast with force enough to tear itself free of my body. I find myself unable to speak, or to even organize my thoughts for a full second. Wrik has declared himself for me.

  “I am so very glad,” I say. “Still a truth remains, that our love will have difficulty finding expression.”

  He shrugs. “After all we have made our way though? They say that love will find a way. I have to believe ours will too, and whatever way it does will be ok. I simply want to know and live what is my truth. I love you, will always love you, and though you were made, and I was born, we’re intended to be together. We’ll be all right so long as we stay together. What we need to learn about being together, we’ll learn or create.”

  “I fear,” I say, stroking his face, “that you are condemning yourself to an extended period of frustration.”

  He laughs softly. “Well, if so, I won’t be the first or the last. Some couples used to wait until they were married to consummate their love, sometimes for years. I believe we’ll figure something out.”

  I nod

  “So then, it’s together from here on?” he asks.

  I reply by gently pulling him toward me, and for the first time in my existence expressing attraction and affection, no, more than that, expressing myself as a sexual being. I kiss my lover as the stars shine down on the most wonderful night of my life.

  Chapter 10

  We drove back to Delt’s house after the party, with Delt snoring in the back seat. He’d disappeared with a tall blonde girl for a while, showing up again with a big grin and only slightly unsteady on his feet. He waved Maauro to the front seat and stretched out in the back, opposite the side of the car Maauro entered. Maauro sat next to me, our shoulders touching. As we pulled out into the line of cars going down the packed dirt driveway, I took her left hand in mine, steering one–handed. She smiled and placed her head on my shoulder. It was impossible at that moment to feel that she was any more than a beautiful girl on a starry night. I sneaked a quick kiss before we turned onto the main road. She smiled and snuggled closer. Neither of us felt any need to speak as we drove on. I just enjoyed the spicy ginger-cookie scent of Maauro’s hair.

  A light rain began to hit the windscreen. I activated the wind-shear which kept our vision clear. Gradually the cars around us thinned out as people turned off for their homes. We found ourselves alone, taking the winding road past town and up to Delt’s shop.

  Delt woke just as we pulled up on the parking pad beside his house. We got out and headed into the house. He gave us a sly grin and wink then headed for his room.

  I found myself wishing that the night could end with more than us lying chastely beside each other, but I knew now was not the time to worry about this. We had come an immense distance in a short-time. It was only five years ago in real time that I’d met Maauro on an asteroid, when she’d been an unnamed killing machine. Now she was my love. How to love her, still lay ahead.

  “We can put the mattress on the floor,” I suggested.

  She smiled at me. “Not necessary for tonight. I can simply sit beside you.”

  “I don’t want you to have to sit all… oh, yes, I guess it doesn’t bother you.”

  “Not at all, I am pleased by our proximity, not our posture.”

  I undressed and stretched out. Maauro sat on the floor next to me, with her arm on the bed, resting gently on my own. We had “slept together” before, but there was an intimacy to what we were doing now that had been absent then. It occurred to me that a being that could alter her body in the way Maauro could alter hers, could make it so that she could participate in sex, something she probably knew, but had not yet brought up. I would wait for her to do so. That Rubicon was always a touchy crossing, even for us humans, usually with no way back. Maauro wasn’t ready to focus on it now, and I was not going to rush her. I’d been loved only by Jaelle and by Maauro and in two very different ways. I was content to let this little miracle of Maauro’s love unfold at the speed she wanted it to go at.

  We settled in, and I wondered if I would get any sleep at all.

  Maauro smiled at me, then she leaned forward and care
fully pressed her lips to mine. “I love you, Wrik. I am very happy just now.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  I could see more things unsaid in the somewhat wry smile she gave me and understood the cues she was sending. “Goodnight, Sweetheart.”

  Her smile grew radiant, “Good night, Wrik.”

  I settled down and closed my eyes, determined to think of ice cold breezes and sporting events if needs be, but her hand still lay in mine. I snuck a peek at her, and for all the world she looked asleep, seated next to the bed, her head forward, eyes closed, thick, black hair hanging in her face. It was a simulation of course, a million calculations, programs and thoughts were doubtless racing through her brain, and she was equally aware both, that I was not yet asleep, or of any movement in the house. But, in the fiction that was her life as a biological, she spared no details. And just maybe, sitting here holding my hand in the dark and quiet was an experience worth having for her.

  Whether it was fatigue from all the long, strange days and nights I’d had recently, or something that Maauro did, I felt myself drift off to sleep more quickly than I’d feared, the heat and curiosity in my body subsiding for now.

  When morning came, I found Maauro in the same position, but knowing that I was not a morning person, she confined her personal chipperness to a smile. She was fresh as a daisy, needing neither a toothbrush nor shower. Sometimes I wondered if I wouldn’t enjoy being a boy robot.

  When I got out of the refresher, she was gone, but I could hear voices outside near the machine shop: Delt’s deep rumble and Maauro’s higher voice. I was a little surprised to hear her laugh, she did so rarely and it occurred to me, with a jealous flash, that I had been the only one to make her laugh. Well, Delt did have a way with any female, and it seemed his talent extended to Maauro as well. I figured I’d better get down there and protect my interests.

  I came down the stairs, buttoning on the light blue, short-sleeved shirt I’d picked over a set of field pants. The early morning rain we’d driven back in had both cooled the air and taken any pollen out of the sky. The world outside stood in bright, clean sunlight and had a washed look to it that somehow made me feel hopeful. I could see some of Delt’s staff has shown up and were working over in the hanger area.