His face pales. “If I give you Lilith, what happens?”
“I remove Lilith from existence, or at least from this world. As to you, nothing happens. As I said, I have no interest in your local politics. Your arrest would have an adverse effect on Wrik’s family that outweighs the minor threat you pose.”
He swallows. “Very well, but you realize that she knows you are here and will assume her channels are compromised.”
“Likely. Though she is inexperienced and makes sloppy mistakes because she views herself as the smartest child in the room.”
A bleat of nervous laughter escapes him. “Very well, I have no choice but to accept. She contacted a weapon supplier we used and, through her, me. I arranged for her and her team of machines to land in the Orpus Mountains, the same place the gun-runners used.”
“Where?”
He rattled off some coordinates. “The location is not under any of the satellite coverage we have here of course. That’s why we used it.”
I consider if I should order Dusko aloft but Stardust’s sensor suite is not up to detecting a camouflaged location from orbit. I could do it but that would leave Wrik and his family on world unprotected. In any event, she has probably moved her spacecraft, unless she is an utter fool.
“Are there defenses at this location?”
‘’No,” he responds. “It’s not a base, just one of several pickup points. We don’t keep people that far into the Outback unless a shipment is coming in.” Grieg stares back at Wrik talking with his sister and the children. “Does he know what you are?”
“Of course.”
“My wife,” he replied, “will figure it out on her own.”
“You wife has never been off world, probably met few actual aliens, and given the previous racial laws and culture of your planet, has likely never met a human mutation before. She will realize nothing. You see me through the lense of our previous encounter.”
“I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t harm my family.” Desperation was clear on his face.
I consider. The implied threat to his family is useful in controlling him. Yet, this is Wrik’s sister, these are her children: innocents, unaware, friendly and accepting. No, despite the tactical advantage, I cannot endure the image of me as a threat to the children, even if only in this man’s mind.
“You’ve made yourself my enemy. It is within your own power to reverse that. You’ll cooperate with me, and do nothing to threaten Wrik, his mother, or friends, all of whom are embraced in my network. But do not fear for your family. I was made to be a pitiless war machine but have learned to value life. Your children and wife are also networked to me through Wrik. While I am a killer at need, I do not enjoy it. Nor would I have even you believe that I’m capable of killing the innocent, save as unavoidable collateral damage. Your family is safe unless you are fool enough to bring Lilith here.
“As for your own life, it would be inconvenient for me to have to explain your death. Remain within my instructions, and you will preserve yourself. And try not to look so fearfully at me, so we may enjoy dinner. We’ll have enough to do navigating the family minefield tonight.”
“Easier said than done,” he mutters. The mere fact that he answers me back is some indication that the terror I inflicted on him is receding, a decidedly mixed blessing.
“So what are you two talking about?” Rena called.
“My travels and homeworld,” I reply smoothly. One advantage of being a quantum computer is that I can lie more quickly and consistently than a human.
I detect the movements of another human in the dining room and smell cooked food.
Rena also detects the movement. “Well, Cook must have dinner ready. Shall we go in?”
With obvious relief, Grieg starts in, and I follow. We are seated at a large table in an ornate room. Cook is a cheerful, large woman of middle-age, whom the children are obviously fond of. Indeed, the children prove to be a blessing; they are unaware of the tensions among the adults and provide a neutral focus. Grieg has reacquired his professional politician’s face, doubtless relieved by my promises of his family’s security. Rena is focused on Wrik, though her attention is split between him and the children.
While the evening does not have the free flow and ease of dinners past at Lost Planet, where Jaelle’s lively sense of humor contrasted with Dusko’s sardonic one, it passes pleasantly enough. The remembrance of those seemingly easier times strikes a pang in me. Even if we four are gathered together again, it will not be as it was. We have both lost and gained something in my network. While I would never exchange Wrik’s declared love for me for anything, I cannot help but remember those days with sadness.
Enough of the past, I too, focus on the children with their cheerful nonsense, bemused at their existence on the borderland between fantasy and reality. I am particularly taken with Amelia, who is quieter than the brash Cobus. The food is excellent by my judgment, which may be different than a biological’s. After all, I like cadmium as well.
Chapter 20
After we finished the best meal I’d had in recent memory, and a second helping of Shamberry pie, Grieg pushed back from the table. “I hope you won’t think me rude, but I am still feeling the aftereffects of my close call, and I have an early day. Please don’t leave on my account, but I’m going to turn in.”
“Of course,” I said. “We should get going, too. It’s an hour’s flight from the VTOL stand.”
“And it’s past the children’s bedtime,” Rena said.
“But Mom, Uncle Wrik just got here,” Cobus said, “and he hasn’t shown me how to use my knife yet.”
“And I wanted to show Aurelia my room,” Amelia added, face screwed up in a pout.
“There will be other times,” Rena began, then looked at me hesitantly. I nodded, not quite sure of what I was committing myself to, but knowing that it was needed.
Grieg smiled distantly and shook hands with me, then, after a moment’s hesitation, with Maauro. He gave each protesting child a quick kiss, and then headed upstairs, abandoning them to their mother.
Rena made quick work of the children, herding them up. Maauro looked uncertain at what to do when Amelia raised her arms. I knelt down and hugged the little girl, and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. With my example, Maauro followed suit, holding the little girl very delicately. Cobus threw me a salute and smiled uncertainly at Maauro, girls apparently being a little beyond the scope of this small commando. Then at mother’s shooing, the children went upstairs to bed.
“I’ll be right back down,” Rena said. “Enjoy your coffee.”
Right back down turned out to be about ten minutes. My sister, looking somewhat frazzled, came back down the stairs. Cook came in and warmed everyone’s coffee.
“I’m sorry for all the fuss,” Rena said. “The children were very excited, and Grieg is, well, not quite himself.”
“No worries,” I said with a shrug. “It was kind of a pleasure to be around the kids.”
“Yes,” Maauro added, “we do not spend much time with children.”
“Do you like children?” Rena asked of her.
Maauro face froze, a reaction I had seen occasionally when she was totally surprised by something.
“I’m sorry,” Rena said, “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s not that,” Maauro said. “It’s simply that I had never given the concept any consideration.”
“Well, you’re young still, or you look it.”
“More look it,” Maauro said. “It’s the nature of my people.”
“They’re a handful, but a treasure as well,” Rena said. “I certainly have no regrets about them.”
They way she put that made me wonder what she did have regrets about.
“The coffee is excellent,” I threw in.
“Grieg is friends with an importer. It’s Terran. S
o we saved the best for you.”
“Thanks” I said, draining my cup. “We should be going.”
“Thank you for the lovely dinner,” Maauro said.
Rena smiled. “I wanted my big brother’s girlfriend to feel welcome.”
Maauro nodded. “You were very generous.”
There was a hesitation with Rena. “Maauro, may I ask a favor? I want a few minutes to speak to…Wrik alone. Family matters.”
“I understand. I will go enjoy your garden.”
Rena’s eyebrows rose. “In the dark?”
Now it was Maauro’s turn to smile. “Big eyes, I see well in the dark. Wrik, come get me when you’re done.” She took Rena’s hand. “I will say goodnight now so you need not come out into the dark.”
“Good night,” Rena said.
Maauro slipped out through the doors, leaving my sister with me.
We sat, not quite looking at each other.
Finally, Rena spoke, “Aurelia’s nice.”
“She’s special, both to me and the universe at large.”
“Oh, sounds serious.”
“It is.”
“Be sure before you leap.”
“A warning, Rena?”
She looked directly at me. “Yes, in a way, I suppose.”
“You’re not happy?” I asked, dropping my voice. Why my sister was sharing this with me, I could not tell. We hadn’t even discussed any of what had gone before with us. It struck me that this might be the very practical Rena’s way of dealing with it. She had no rear view mirror and carried no account book. Everything was today.
“Not quite as bad as all that,” she said, but the low room light threw a shadow across her eyes, and I couldn’t see any expression there.
“That’s not what I am picking up,” I ventured.
She shrugged in a short almost explosive motion, then sighed. “Well, if not that bad, then not that good, either.”
“So why do you stay with him?” I asked. It seemed bizarre to me to be discussing this, but it was possible that my very isolation from every one she knew made me a safe person to confide in. I was bound to keep her secrets, being in the same family.
Rena grimaced. “I don’t know, the children I suppose, the memories of the life we had together, the chance that things might get better…” Suddenly, my sister’s face looked much older, and I struggled to find something to say.
“I wonder if there is still time for me,” she half-whispered, and I was not sure which of us she was talking to.
“To do what?” I asked softly.
“To stop my children from traveling the roads we did, for me not to turn into Mom, and Grieg not to turn into Dad.”
“He doesn’t seem…”
“As bad as our Father,” Rena finished.
“Well I didn’t … that wasn’t what I was... exactly...”
“He may not be as unyielding as Dad, or as emotionally shutdown, but he’s vastly more ambitious. Dad was a rebel, a true believer. Grieg is just using the rebels to build a political power base.”
“You said he had the same politics as our father.”
She shook her head. “He practices the same politics as our father, but I don’t know that he really believes any of it. Sometimes I wonder if he ever loved me, or if I was just another piece for his political toolkit; a career move, marry the daughter of a war hero and a rebel icon.”
“Is there something I can do?” it sounded banal even to my ears. God knew I had no idea what to do if the answer was, yes.
Rena smiled a sad, remote smile. “I don’t have the right to ask you to play big-brother. Not now. No, I made my bed. I have to lie in it, or get up and remake it.”
She stood suddenly and turned in a nervous half-circle. “What’s got me going right now is that something is going on with Grieg. Something more than a flyer accident, if there was an accident.”
“What?” I said.
“I don’t know. He insists everything is just fine but you saw how jumpy he was tonight. It’s nothing I can put my finger on, but since the accident, there have been a lot of changes. It’s like he’s avoiding his rebel and political associates. I swear he’s hiding out in the house. And many of his friends seem to have disappeared. We wives have our own network; there are a lot of men missing, and no one has gone to the police about it.”
For the first time since I’d returned, I saw a genuine, unfiltered emotion on Rena’s face, fear.
“Rena what is Grieg involved with? What exactly?”
She shrugged again in that quick motion, eloquent of an animal tension. “He doesn’t tell me much. I know the public stuff, the political campaigns, but there is something more, and I’m not privy to that level. He keeps me isolated from it.”
“You think he is involved in something violent?”
“It could be,” she said, after a few seconds silence. “There are a lot of hardcore rebels in his base. I’ve had a hard time taking them seriously. I mean, for God’s sake, the Confederacy slapped us down before. Why would it be any different now?”
I thought of our missions for the Confederacy, the undermining by the Voit-Veru, Solari and others, Maauro’s own predictions of the eventual fall of the Confederacy. Was this a symptom here? I bit my lip, finding myself still unable to trust Rena. Even if I did, there was little I could tell her.
“I have connections,” I said slowly.
Rena just stared.
“I didn’t go to Seddon by chance. I have connections and resources.”
Slowly, reluctantly, she shook her head. “It might bring down the wrong kind of attention. I don’t want Grieg in some asteroid prison.”
I nodded. “All right, but remember what I said.” Privately, I decided I would talk to Maauro. Something was definitely wrong with Grieg, and it had to do with the old rebel alliance. Could the Confederacy be moving in and arresting some of the missing? With my pass it would be simple enough to contact Confed authorities myself, but Rena could be right—what would I bring down on my family?
Maauro was the safest bet. I was sure that, with her black computer magic, she’d rip through Retief’s networks and find out something.
“It’s late,” I said.
“Yes,” Rena nodded. “Did you want to look in on the children?”
“No. I don’t want to risk waking them. It seems to take a lot to get them down.”
She sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“No I don’t guess that I do. I know more about ships than children.”
“Well maybe that will change,” my sister said, her mask of politeness sliding back into place. “That big-eyed girl seems pretty taken with you.”
I thought of some of what Maauro and I hadn’t even begun to consider. I hoped I kept it off my face.
“Who can say?” I managed with a smile of my own. “We’ve gone a lot further together than anyone would have guessed.”
Rena looked confused, unsure of how to respond. We’d both wandered up to the edge of what divided us, for all that neither of had referred to the chasm at our feet.
“I’d better get going,” I said, finally.
Rena nodded and fell in next to me as we walked up to the door to the terrace. As we reached it, my sister placed her hand on my arm, a light touch, like a butterfly’s wing. “Good night, Wrik,” she stumbled a bit over my first name. She’d been about to call me Piet.
Something inchoate welled up in me, something I hadn’t felt with my mother, or Delt. I couldn’t put a name to it, but I felt a longing for a time before I knew what I knew now, before so much had been laid down for us and bound in iron. I wanted to go back to when our only quarrel was over what toys we were going to bring, to play where. Before my father had tried to make a rebel soldier of me and tried to turn Rena into the dutiful colonial wife.
She stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light. I couldn’t see her face, but her head was down, and hesitancy was clear in her stance.
“I can?” she whispered.
“I said so, Rena. I’m better with trouble now then I used to be.” With that I walked into the garden, taking the long way around to the front of the house. I found Maauro standing statue-still among the glowing starfells and windriders, their glimmering tendrils tossing in even the lightest of breezes. She took my arm, and we let ourselves out through a small, ornate gate to where the car was parked.
I slid into the rental and started it as Maauro entered from the other side. As we pulled away from the house, the porch lights dimmed, Rena or the automatics, I didn’t know.
“Maauro, there’s something happening with my brother-in-law. He’s involved in rebel politics. Something I didn’t take seriously when I first heard about it, but now I’m not so sure. Rena says a lot of men are missing from his circles. Could the Confederacy have made a move on the dissidents?”
Maauro looked at me, her face smooth, but I sensed a pensive mood in her. “I would detect the movement of Confederate forces on world. We are the highest clearance Confed operatives here. Wouldn’t they have involved us in such an operation?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The workings of a mind like Candace Deveraux’s are beyond me.”
“In any event, it would be difficult to keep the electronic traffic of such an operation from me. Even on this world, with this patchwork of networks, I am monitoring all military and political data flows. I cannot read it all, not without crashing though their barriers and alerting them, yet there would be an increase in the volume of traffic, and the use of nonstandard channels to support such an operation. None of these have been manifest.”
“Still, something is up. I know that my sister is scared.”
“The house is watched,” Maauro added. “I have established a sensor net over their home.”
All the Difference Page 19