“I’m glad,” I said, unsure of what more to say.
“This was good. I needed this.”
“I am,” I said slowly, “the man who loves you. You don’t have to tell me anything, if you don’t want to, but you can tell me everything.”
“Sometimes, Wrik, you will have to accept that there will be things that I cannot explain. Take it that I have been overwhelmed by my emotions during our separation. I will deal with it better in the future.”
I knew that this wasn’t all there was to it and that in some measure, Maauro was lying to me. But I had held my own secrets until I felt I needed to share them. It hurt a little that she had something she didn’t want to tell me, but she had also turned to me as the comfort that she needed.
“I suppose we shall have to say something to Delt,” she said in obvious reluctance.
I shook my head. “He’ll ask only two questions: are you ok, and what do you need?”
“That is good for now.”
I got up and reached down, absurdly, to help her up. She took my hand for all that she not only didn’t need it and really couldn’t use it without flinging me over her head.
“Can we shower together?” she asked.
“Sure, Sweetheart.” We moved to the small shower. I carefully set the water temperature and then we got in. How water sluiced over both of us. I reached for the shampoo and put it in her long hair. It was rather silly, Maauro’s hair never felt dirty or smelled like anything other than ginger cookies. But she stood under my ministrations, the water running down her body, seeming content to stay there.
After I rinsed her long hair, she looked up at me, her face serious and reserved. It was a warning against questions that I was not inclined to test. We got out and toweled off, and I threw on some clothes. Maauro morphed into casual dark green pants, a tan short-sleeve shirt and a white sweater. It all seemed to match, so I guess she had been working on her fashion sense. I wasn’t sure from where she’d produced it, but she bound her long hair, already dry, up in a big, yellow bow.
We trooped down the stairs to be greeted by the smell of good cooking. Delt stood over a pot of stew, which bubbled and looked large enough to feed ten people.
He looked up at Maauro as we came down. “You ok?
“Getting there,” she replied.
“What do you need, Pretty Princess?”
Maauro considered. “Stew, I need stew.”
“Stew’s coming up with cornbread on the side. What else?”
“A power socket and some privacy.”
“Ok, all that. Stew first. Go sit.”
We tucked around the table in front of the odd collection of bowls and plates that were Delt’s tableware. He piled generous helpings of stew in the bowls, then cut up cornbread, slathered it with butter and slid it in front of us. A couple of beers appeared in mugs with aircraft on them.
“Good to have you back,” Delt said.
“How could I miss this stew?” she asked, deadpan.
We exploded in laughter. Suddenly, the cloud that had sat on Maauro seemed to dissipate. The stew was good and hearty. The slathered cornbread was just like Mom used to make, though she didn’t usually serve it with beer. As if by tacit agreement the meal passed with nothing of any serious nature being discussed
We walked out to the porch, listening to a pair of light aircraft taking off. Delt waved to his Morok foreman, whose first name I’d still not learned to pronounce. The apish alien waved back and headed for the parking lot, followed by two female techs.
Maauro settled her back against my knees; the bench wouldn’t take her weight without her being locked in a supporting position. I could feel the warmth of her body as I had a leg on either side of her, but I knew she was only allowing so much of her weight against me. I stroked her hair, avoiding the yellow hair bow,
Delt joined us, handing each of us a bottled beer and perched on the rail, staring out at the lowering sun and the lengthening shadows of the oncoming evening.
“Wrik,” Delt began. “I’ve been trying to reach the members of the squadron, ran into some rather hard feelings there.”
I couldn’t quite shrug off the sinking feeling his comment brought.
“With one exception, who I think we need to have on our side.”
“Yeah?”
“You remember Janna Lourens?”
“That hellion? Who could ever forget her? She was a maniac in a fighter.”
“Well, these days she’s a parson in the Anglican church—”
“What?” I said, my jaw dropping.
“Yep, threw me too when I found out. But more to the point, she’s on a sabbatical over in Kalbara, not far from here. She was almost as happy as I was to hear you were still alive.”
“Does that mean she’s going slug me when I see her?”
“No one is going to hit you,” Maauro interjected, her voice flat and toneless.
It took a few moments for the chill to fade from the air after that. I stroked her hair again.
“Anyway, I felt, especially after talking to Regina, that I needed her help.”
“Ok,” I said.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked, tapping his bottle with a finger. “I mean you’ve had a pretty good run…”
I’d started shaking my head. “No, I want this wound cleaned all the way out, so it scars over, and I can get on with my life.”
Delt nodded. “Rev Janna said she’d like to meet us for a picnic lunch tomorrow.”
“I’ll be glad to see her,” I responded.
“Is she pretty?” Maauro asked.
We both broke up again. After a second, Maauro leaned back and smiled up at me. She looked expectant.
“She was hot,” Delt said, an evil grin on his face.
“Yep,” I said, “best-looking girl in the squadron.”
Maauro playfully thumped my toe with her fist.
The next day, we rose early and headed back in the direction of my old home, to Kalbara, a small town with an Anglican retreat just outside of it, whose chief reason for being was the intersection of two rivers.
Janna had picked a picturesque spot with a view of the Lelane River to meet at. There were some young couples around the riverbanks under the sailtrees and waving stalks of ver-grass. As wasn’t uncommon, Maauro drew stares from the locals, who noticed her big eyes and slender frame. But Maauro’s mood was cool, even a tad grim, and no one who stared at her seemed to enjoy the experience of her staring back. We soon found our section of the park relatively empty. So we set our picnic lunch basket down on a red-painted table and waited.
A woman came up on a bicycle. Delt waved and jogged over to meet her, I waited with Maauro. Delt returned, followed by Janna Lourens. I almost didn’t recognize her. Janna had been the smallest person in the squadron, nicknamed the Devil’s Pixie, by pilots who’d been unable to shake her off their six o’clock once she’d locked on them. Back then, she’d boasted a mane of unruly and glossy chestnut hair that was forever escaping her helmet. Her fashion choices could only have been described as daring. But the woman walking beside Delt, wore gray slacks and a matching shirt with a white collar. Her hair was neat, short and in a simple style.
Despite Delt’s assurances, I braced myself as her eyes met mine. But the good-natured, freckled and snub-nosed face split in a broad grin. The wave of relief that surged through me was so intense I felt momentarily light-headed.
Instantly, I felt Maauro’s hand on my back. She must have detected the reaction.
“Wrik,” Delt called. “You remember Janna, well I should say the Reverend Janna.”
“Easy, Flyboy,” Janna said, with a gentle laugh, stopping a meter away from me. “You’ll make me feel old and responsible.” She slapped Delt on his broad-shoulder. The warmth in her smile did not dim as she turned back to me. �
�Hello Piet … sorry, I mean Wrik. Damn, it’s good to see you.”
Her eyes slid past me. “And you must be Maauro. I’ll confess that I am not sure how to address a living artificial intelligence.”
I gave Delt a sharp glance.
“I felt it necessary to take Janna completely into our confidence,” he said with an apologetic air. “It won’t work without her, and I didn’t feel right holding back on her.”
Maauro placed a hand on my arm. “It’s all right, Wrik. We must trust in Delt’s judgment. He possesses the best local intelligence in our network.”
“Yeah that’s me,” Delt said, with a rueful grin, “G-2 all the way.”
Janna pulled her attention away from Maauro with obvious effort. “Delt told me why you came back. I’m glad you did. It’s good to know another of us made it.”
“I made it by running away.”
“I know. And I made it by never really engaging. Oh, I circled around the edge of the fight, shot off all my ordnance, emptied my guns and capacitors. So what? Did you see me in either Delt’s ratrace, or the furball that you and Spider flight got into? I dumped my weapons load, headed for the deck and scrambled back to the base at treetop level. They gave me some sort of a medal for it. I forget which one. I gave it to one of the kids at the orphanage for her doll. She thought it was pretty.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say. Janna gestured at us to settle on a wooden table by some rocks by the riverside. The sun sparkled through the fronds of the trees and off the water, and the afternoon wind held a cool edge to it. Delt began to unpack our picnic with Maauro’s help.
“So you ran away,” Janna continued. “I pretended to fight, and Delt led all of us into a slaughter and most of us died. That’s our brutal, unchangeable past. My concern is the present and what we can make of the future.
“Welcome back,” she stood stepped forward and put her arms around me.
I fought for control. No tears, no cheap sentiment, I demanded of myself.
“Thanks Janna,” I managed; my voice harsh and strained to my own ears. “Can’t tell you …. can’t tell you what that means to me. For the chance to ask your—”
“Forgiveness?” she said, eyebrows rose as she stepped back, wiping tears I hadn’t seen coming, off her face. “I’ll trade you and Delt both. You forgive me for being in a fighter and not being in the fight?”
“Done,” I said. I looked at Delt.
“Done,” he repeated, his voice a whisper, big hands knotted in fists.
Janna walked over to put an arm around him and gradually he relaxed. “You have the greatest burden of all us to let go of. I’ve told you that before.”
“Can’t seem,” he swallowed, “can’t seem to find the right place to leave it.”
“Enough of the past,” Janna said, still holding onto Delt’s arm. “Piet… I mean Wrik. How can this simple pastor serve you?”
I drew a deep breath. “I want to see the other survivor’s of the Ncome Commando. To make my peace, or at least offer it, and to take whatever it is I have coming from them. Delt feels that if you add your voice to his, that we can get all three of them.”
Janna sighed and let go of Delt’s arm and we all sat at the table save for Maauro who perched on a rock just next to it. “That’s what Delt told me, and he also told me he had reservations about it. Some of which I share. I’ll help, of course, but you have to understand that there are some folk who are more forgiving than others. Some for whom the rebellion is almost a religion in itself.”
I nodded. “I don’t expect it to be easy, or that everyone will forgive me. Frankly, I’ve already done better with you and Delt than I ever dreamt possible.”
She nodded. “I’ll make the contacts and see what I can set up. It will take some time. We’re scattered all over the continent. I think it best if we meet here, rather than at Delt’s, more of a neutral ground.”
I nodded.
A sparkle returned to Janna’s eyes. “But now Wrik, you must let me talk to the marvelous Maauro here. You can’t imagine what it means to a religious person to meet a true artificial intelligence. Oh, if my divinity professor could see me now!” Her eyes practically gleamed with liturgical lust.
“You wish to ask me if I have a soul,” Maauro stated, a gentle smile on her face. She leaned back on the rock she’d perched on, we shifted to face her.
“Yes,” Janna said. “Isn’t that the essential question of all life? Is this all I am?”
Maauro considered that. “Perhaps. I find myself more interested in the nature of love.”
Janna’s jaw dropped. Delt smiled and winked at me.
“However,” Maauro continued. “It is clearly a central issue of existence. Are we merely temporarily denizens of space-time? I have no known limit on my life span, but in a universe that will continue for billions of years, the mere 50,000 years I have lived, and whatever I have left to experience, measures more closely to your own brief lives than to any cosmic scale.”
“And that is my cue to get the beer,” Delt said, standing. “I’ll be back.” He headed back to the rented aircar, which had a cooler in the air-conditioned compartment
Maauro’s look at him was only amused. Janna gave him a distracted nod.
“So, like you,” Maauro said, “I must live in the hope that I have an immortal part, that there is something of me that God, or whatever you call the creator outside of space-time, intends to continue. I must believe that my life, my love, even my thinking adds up to more that the space required to store it in memory. I will grant you that I have no more proof than you do of the existence of my soul, or its place in the eyes of God. Indeed I have less, these concepts of God and the soul are not mine, but have come to me through my interaction with biological life forms.”
“Amazing,” Janna breathed.
“Still, and I cannot tell you the why of it, as it touches on classified matters, my belief in my soul comes from a glance into my own future, where I know that I believe, where I have matured to certainty from question.”
“Then you will outstrip many of us,” Janna said, “who will live with doubt.”
Maauro laughed. “Perhaps it is only that when I settle an issue for myself, I am not given to second thoughts. That which was the best decision, will remain the best decision, absent new and relevant information.
“In a way, it must be so for me. All my decisions about life and existence are self-willed. I do not know when it was in the long ages of my exile in the asteroid, when my power levels were so low that even the Brownian motion of my own atoms was scavenged for power, that I came alive. I only know that shortly after I was reawakened by Wrik, I had a sense of self that was not that of a machine. Through Wrik’s friendship and later his love, I became more. I acquired the dignity and choices of the free-willed.”
Maauro looked at me. “One terrible day, Wrik stood in a dark place, facing my weapons, knowing me to be a merciless killer, condemned to follow the instructions of my ancient creators and bet all he had, that there was more to me. That the Maauro he had befriended could defeat the programmed war machine she’d been made as. Who has received a greater gift than that?”
Janna’s hands were in front of her face in an almost reverent pose. I sat there blushing like a fool. I was suddenly conscious of Delt standing next to me. He gently put the six-pack on the wooden table as if afraid to make any noise.
“And,” Maauro said, reaching forward in a swift gesture and snatching up a bottle. “I can open these with my fingertips.” She casually popped the top off the lager and passed it to me.
“My God,” Delt said, in an awed voice. “She’s the perfect woman.”
The picnic proves a happy diversion from Wrik’s concerns and my recent memories. I find that Janna is one of the most appealing humans I have met. I am hopeful of creating a network connection with her. She is as young
and pretty, as I appear to be to others. If I had been born biological, I might have been her. We share our interests in existential matters, to Wrik’s bemusement and Delt’s apparent boredom.
Afterwards, we pack up. She is headed back to the seminary, we, to an inn nearby to await the rest of Wrik’s teammates: Regina Van Dyck, Carel Englebreact, and Johan Dewalt. Van Dyck and Dewalt concern me; both have had criminal incidents since their service days. Some of these have involved violence.
Wrik and Delt grab the basket and the bottles and head for the car and some trash cans. It gives me a chance to speak with the priestess outside of their hearing. I place a hand on her arm. She turns to face me, a question on her face.
“I am glad that we have a moment alone,” I say to Janna.
“Yes?” she replied, her eyes lively with interest.
“Wrik’s mission of reconciliation has been… unpredictable, at least to me.”
“Likely, that won’t change,” she says with a sigh. “With one of his squadron mates I hope for reconciliation, but with others….”
“Be warned of this,” I say, willing sternness into my voice. “I have no interest in the past, not in the rightness or wrongness of anything that was, or was not done, nor in people’s assessments or resentments. I am only interested in Wrik’s safety and well-being. Words I will tolerate, to a point, but nothing beyond that, and I am death itself when provoked.”
The smile vanishes. “I believe you.”
“It may fall to you to ensure that others do as well.”
Chapter 30
We toured the small town for the rest of the day. Janna stayed with us for an hour before heading back. She had calls to make and wanted to make them in peace and quiet. Toward evening, we settled into the inn. I made calls to both my mother, which was pleasant, and my sister, which was awkward. Maauro was watching both locations through her own means and assured me all was well and there was no present danger, but she’d been less than prescient about things on Retief, and I was concerned that the crudity of the planet’s infonet and her unfamiliarity with the place, might be hampering her usual skills.
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