I walked over to the machine shop, following a smell of coffee and something sweet. I found Maauro and Delt inside the open door, chatting amiably. Maauro, as always, was on her life-long scavenger hunt for power and had hooked into the grid by a thin cable that did not look like it could possibly carry the load. I assumed it was of her amazing chassis material. Next to her, was a tray of tea, coffee and pastries.
“Hey, Sleepyhead is up,” Delt called.
“It would be better to delay speaking to him until he has some coffee in him,” Maauro advised.
“No change there,” Delt snorted.
Maauro caught my glance at the power tap.
“I have billed this to my private account,” she advised.
“A good breakfast is a host’s duty,” Delt protested.
“A good guest does not bankrupt her host,” she replied. “While I draw power from everything from solar to the movement of my body parts on a molecular level, those are slow and inefficient compared to a direct draw.”
I remembered her sitting on the chest of the thirty-meter-tall Destroyer after downing it, draining its nuclear reactor. “Unless you see some enemy mecha running around, I guess this will have to do.”
Maauro gave me a curious look, then smiled uncertainly. Delt and I tucked into the pastries. I was a bit surprised to see Delt spike his coffee with strata, a wickedly powerful local liquor.
He caught my gaze and stopped pouring. “Kills the taste of what passes for coffee out here.” But there was a touch of guilt to the comment. I knew Maauro followed the incident, but whether the implications and nuances of booze in the morning meant anything to her I couldn’t tell. We said nothing about it and instead regaled Maauro with stories about our childhood, to which she listened to with rapt attention.
“So what is the plan for today, or for that matter, the days ahead?” Maauro asked.
“I’m taking it one day at a time,” I replied slowly, swirling my own coffee. “Not sure I can handle more. I’ll have to find the survivors of the N’come Commando and see if I can get them together somewhere.”
“I may have an idea there,” Delt said. “Let me make some calls.”
“Ok. But today my first priority is to locate my mother. I doubt the old bastard…” I paused, looking at Maauro, “my father—”
“I am in no doubt as to whom the old bastard is,” she said.
“Well, anyway, I doubt he’d reach out to my mother. He might call my sister, Rena, and let her know I’m back, but I’m not sure if my mother and sister are on speaking terms. We weren’t a close family.”
“Rena’s pretty busy these days,” Delt added unexpectedly.
I looked at him in a mixture of reluctance and expectation.
“She’s married to Grieg Nazir. You remember him?”
“No.”
“He was two years behind us, so he’s your sister’s age. After you left…well, he kind of became a second son. Piet, I’m sorry—”
“It is what it is,” I replied, but I couldn’t stop the rest from bursting out of me. “He always wanted a different son.”
“Well, Grieg shared your Dad and sister’s politics down to a tee, they’ve been married for nine years. She has two children with him. He’s a big wheel in revanchist politics. That family is also big in mining and ranching.”
“So he maintains my sister in the fashion she always wanted to be accustomed to.” It sounded peevish even to me.
Delt merely nodded.
“I have no interest in seeing Rena, but I do want to find Mom. I can’t pop my face into a videoscreen after twelve years, so it’s a matter of finding her and getting there.”
“For the first,” Maauro said, “that sounds like a job for a quantum computer.” To Delt’s evident surprise, Maauro poured herself a cup of coffee and unplugged from the wall. The cable slipped noiselessly back into her body through a seamless entrance as she reached for a pastry.
“She’s particularly fond of pastries,” I said to Delt’s bemused expression.
“Obviously,” Delt replied as Maauro made short work of the cake and reached for another.
“It’s all energy,” she added, with a smile and a wink.
Delt laughed and slapped his leg. “Age of wonder, Piet, age of wonders, breakfast with an honest to god actual, living, sentient AI, from before men learned to throw spears. I’m looking right at her, and it’s still impossible to believe.”
“Plus, I’m cute and funny,” Maauro said.
The time Delt laughed until tears came to his eyes. I shook my head and grinned.
“Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have such a friend?” Delt demanded, a serious expression overtaking the laughter.
“Yes,” I said. I turned to Maauro. “I guess we’d better start looking for my mother.”
“I have explored every accessible database while we were enjoying these pastries,” Maauro said. “The name Trigardt is not uncommon on this world, but unless your mother has legally changed her name, in which case I will have to risk cracking through court security, the highest probability is that she is living in the seaport village of Glen Cove near the town of Saldhana about 329.45 kilometers from here. I have the address.”
Delt whistled.
“I can do that, too,” Maauro said, and did.
Delt shook his head, “Too many wonders for one morning. Piet…Wrik, I have an old Magister trainer you can borrow. You’ll have to pay your own fees and flight tax. Things have been a little tight around the shop, but the bird is yours.”
“A Magister,” I said with a grin. “God, I haven’t seen one of these since Flight School.”
“It’s the bright yellow job in Hanger Three. I’ll have it fueled and readied for you.”
“I have added the credits for that to your account,” Maauro said.
He nodded at her.
I faced Maauro. “It’s a two-seater.”
“I would be happy to come with you. It will be interesting to meet your mother.”
“Interesting!” Delt said. He stood up with a pastry and coffee then walked off. “Interesting!”
Maauro went to check over the Magister, while I packed up our gear, which was mostly my gear as Maauro travelled with very little, producing and cannibalizing what she needed from her own body and in truth, needing little of anything.
I found Delt waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me.
“You coming back after this?” he asked.
I nodded. “When I see the rest of the Commando, well I’d like…I wish…”
“I’ll stand right by you,” Delt said. “Never doubt it.”
Relief surged through me, I had wanted to ask, but been unable to summon the courage to do so.
Delt suddenly grinned. “I’ll have to concede pride of place to Maauro though. Unless I miss my guess, I may be standing beside you but she’ll be standing in front.”
I shook my head slowly. “No. Not this time.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t count on winning that argument.”
I gave a rueful smile. “Well I don’t win many arguments with her, but I must win this one.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be in touch. Let me settle things with my mother, and then we will see about the Commando.” I turned to leave.
“Wrik.”
I turned to Delt.
“You and Maauro,” he said, hesitantly. “You look good on that dance floor together.”
“It was the first time we’ve danced together,” I replied, fighting a feeling of shyness.
“You two,” he said. “Well, you seem a part of each other, somehow. Like you’ve always been together.”
I leaned back against the door. “There have been other women since I left here but somehow … I don’t understand it myself … somehow I have to be with Maauro o
r it just isn’t right. I can’t explain it.”
“Well, not to be too indelicate, but can you be with Maauro?”
I looked at him in surprise for such a question, but there was no malice in Delt’s open, easy, face.
“Not as a woman,” I answered slowly.
“Hence the other women you spoke of?” he said.
“Sometimes. It’s complicated. I met my consort, Jaelle, not long after I met Maauro. I was with her, and Maauro was our friend. But gradually Jaelle and I drifted apart, and Maauro and I closer together. We’ve never really dealt with this. I guess I started out kind of seeing her as a kid-sister in a way. You know, like Bel-Anne in our group of kids growing up. I just didn’t think of her that way. She also looked younger at the time. She’s made some minor and subtle changes to appear older now.
“Hell, half the time Jaelle or Maauro was urging me to start something with a human woman because of how different both of them were.”
“Did you?”
“No. I mean I was involved with a woman named Olivia, but that was a no-strings-attached deal because she wanted it that way. By then I’d ruined things with Jaelle, because I wasn’t able to commit to her, or come clean with my past. We’re still consorts, but it’s now just a friendship, if that even survives. I never seriously considered what it would mean to be committed to Maauro. I mean, I love her—”
“Really?”
“You’re goddamn right I do.”
He raised a hand. “No static, Piet. It seems to me that you have a good deal there. I mean I don’t understand it, but she seems to be, well, I am not sure how to express it, but I liked her from the first. It’s weird but there is a kind of, I dunno, sweet kind of girlish character to her. While I may not know much about androids, I know women, I would say that one loves you back.”
“She does. It’s something deep, but well it’s just been emotional to date. I guess we’ll have to figure that out at some point.”
“Yeah, I expect you might. So I guess I shouldn’t try fixing you up with any of the local girls then.”
I shook my head. “No thanks. I’ve had enough romantic complications for now. I need to get my head straight before I do anything serious. I have to get the claws of the past out of me and belong to myself before I can give myself to someone.”
“Ok, just leaves more pretty ones for me,” he said with a grin.
“You ever going to get serious about women?” I asked.
“Why? Look what happened to you, all grim and confused. Not for me, buddy. I’m sure there’s a perfect girl out there for me, but I believe I owe it to myself to devote a great deal of study and testing to the subject. Heck, I haven’t even gone through all the candidates on this miserable rock ball. I really should get out in the galaxy and see what’s out there. I mean, even a homely rascal like you seems to be up to his armpits in, exotic catgirls, sexy alien robots—”
I shook my head and we both laughed.
After a few seconds I turned half-away. “Delt.”
“Yeah,”
“Thanks. I haven’t … I haven’t had anybody I could talk to about these kinds of things. Not in a long while. Well, not since last time I talked with you.”
“Ah, same old Piet, thinking all the time. Just gets a man in trouble. I’ve got to run into town. I’ll see you and Maauro whenever you get back.” He thumped me lightly on the shoulder with his fist and swaggered off.
Chapter 11
An hour later, we took off in the old Magister for Glen Cove. I piloted the trim two-seater with its swallow tail and graceful lines. With its best cruising speed, we would make the seacoast in an hour. I was glad the trainer was a side-by-side model so I could talk to Maauro easily. It did take some playing around with the docile aircraft’s trim to compensate for her weight on the other side of the plane. We soared over the endless grasslands of the plateau in and among the scudding clouds that piled up to the stratosphere or passed under our wings.
“So much of this world seems undeveloped and empty,” Maauro said, as she looked out the canopy.
“Partly by design,” I answered as we flew into the shadow of some clouds. “The original colonists wanted to recreate something, maybe something that never really existed. They had their chance, like so many of the other separatist colonies, but like most of them, they carried the seeds of their destruction with them.”
Ahead a glimpse of blue began to come into view, the Ubruggia Sea. I found myself wishing the flight wasn’t so short, that I wouldn’t be facing my mother so soon. I was determined not to trade hate for hate as I had with my father, or cry like a child as I had with Delt. Maauro was with me, and an audience, even a beloved friend, made me more reticent about my emotions.
I called into the airport. The Magister wasn’t an aircar, so it had greater range, but wasn’t suited for roads. I was able to get a VTOL spot near the seaside. I landed and slid it under a shelter.
Beside me, Maauro’s form blurred slightly as the canopy rose. She’d changed from her usual jumpsuit to a blue dress, with a white sweater, matching shoes with a slight heel finished the outfit. “It seemed more appropriate for meeting your mother.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say. Maauro’s fashion sense was erratic at best, but the simple dress looked wonderful on her, for all it was made of material that would stop either a bullet or a beam with ease.
Maauro and I hopped out. I secured the Magister while she got our packs out of the cargo compartment in the nose. I had no idea where we would be staying, but there would be a hotel in town, if nothing else.
“I’ll call for a cab,” Maauro said. I noticed she’d put sunglasses over her huge eyes.
I shook my head and shouldered a pack. “Let’s walk. We have all day for this.”
Maauro didn’t question but followed me out of the security fence onto the beach beyond. We’d walked on in silence for a few minutes on the beach before I drew up. I looked at Maauro’s feet. “What am I thinking? You can’t walk all that way in those shoes.”
She stared at me. “What are you thinking? These aren’t shoes, they don’t hurt and I can resize them into broader sandals if the sand is too soft.”
“Yes of course.” Pull yourself together, Wrik, I thought. We resumed walking down the beach, heading to the more densely packed sand at the water’s edge. A few people were enjoying the brisk morning; children were running about, their high voices piping. Parents and grandparents trailed. Some hardy souls with wetsuits were on boards among the waves.
Some people smiled at us as we walked by. Why shouldn’t they? Maauro walking beside me was slim and pretty in her dress and sweater, her black hair trailing in the wind. How could anyone guess she was made of nearly indestructible malleable ceramics and unknown metals? I wore an open-collared, blue-shirt and a tan windbreaker over black pants. We looked like any young couple out enjoying a walk on the beach.
Maauro pointed with delight at a dancing kite, being flown by some children on a jetty. I reached out and took her hand in mine as we walked on, it was soft and warm as usual. A serious expression stole over her face, but she put her other hand across her chest to hold onto my arm as we walked on, shoulder to shoulder. It occurred to me that we’d never walked so before. She never touched me with the former Infestor arm if she could avoid it.
“I find myself concerned about meeting your mother,” she said suddenly.
I looked down in surprise. “Why?”
She gave me what I swore was an exasperated look.
“She’ll like you,” I assured.
“Will she? Hello Mrs. Trigardt, my name is Maauro, I am a 50,134-year-old combat android, engaged in an emotionally intense, sexually-ambiguous relationship with your son, that exposes him to frequent dangers, frustrates his chances of having a decent relationship with a biological female of any species, and grandchildren must be regarded as
a long shot almost beyond the realm of calculation.”
I thought about it. “We won’t lead with that.”
“What do I call her?” Maauro persisted. “Mrs. Trigardt sounds juvenile to me. I am, after all, much older than her. However she might take my use of her first name as presumptuous given my apparent youth—”
“You weren’t this nervous when you tackled the Kolzin Destroyer on Seddon.”
“That,” she said, “was merely a thirty-meter fighting machine. This is your mother.”
I shook my head. “We’ll have to play it as it lies.”
“One thing,” Maauro said, her voice firm. “We do not start with lies. I am what I am. Your mother must have the chance to accept or reject that.”
“I agree,” I said. “The time for lies, at least with some people, is past.”
I finally spotted a sign for an exit from the beach labeled, “Village of Glen Cove.” I drew a deep breath, and we made our way off the windswept beach. We found ourselves on a narrow street, fronted with brightly-painted small homes, bungalows and a few larger buildings with second stories and widow’s walks. Wind chimes sang their songs, and the yard and porches were decorated with bits of the seaside life: anchors, shells and pieces of driftwood. The homes had the weather-beaten look of buildings that faced a sea.
My mother had always loved the sea. It surprised everyone when she moved to the dry uplands and endless veldt of the interior. Maybe the austere face of that land should have warned her of my father’s unforgiving nature. Enough of that, I thought, as we stopped in front of No 11. Her name was on the mailbox, Eldra Trigardt.
“Shall I wait here?” Maauro asked.
“No. I need you with me.”
We walked up to the porch. I rang the bell on the comp panel by the door.
Maauro suddenly turned to the left, giving me a moment’s warning before my mother walked around the corner of the house, with a watering can in hand. I froze, trying to recognize my mother in the slender, almost gaunt, gray and blonde-haired woman with her denim-blue eyes, a stranger who gave us a friendly, if blank, look. The years hadn’t been kind. My mother looked like she’d aged twenty-five years in the twelve I’d been away. Her hair, which had always been her pride and joy, was tied back in a careless pony tail. Her skin, which she’d always protected from sun, was lined, and the clothes hung on her as if she’d shrunk.
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