The Saffron Malformation (93 page)

             
Silence hovered uncomfortably between them for a long set of ticks.  “You’re right,” she finally said.  “That was part of it.  You were my first,” she told him and the gravity of that settled on him and he felt even worse.  “Rain said the first hurts the worst.”  She looked out the window.  “I thought she meant physically.”

             
Quey swallowed and looked away from her.  He remembered his first then, and how hard it was when the whole thing fell apart on him.  He was about to speak when she asked, “So why did you want to?  The first time.”

             
He looked at her.  “Because,” he shrugged.  “You’re beautiful.  And I do like you, your company.  I didn’t call you all those times along the road just to give you updates on Geo.  I thought you were amazing.”

             
“You thought I was a robot.”

             
Quey shook his head.  “That was later, at first I thought you were a loon.”  She laughed slightly and he smiled and added, “Then you were a robot.”

             
“And now?”

             
“Oh, now I know you’re a loony robot.”  He smirked and she chuckled and he followed.  “Got quite a hold on humor now haven’t you?”

             
“I’m still learning,” she replied.

             
“How does that work?”

             
“I don’t understand.”

             
“How can you learn a sense of humor?”

             
“It’s not about learning to have a sense of humor, I had to learn to recognize when something is funny.  It’s hard because there’s so many types of humor and my hardware was having trouble recognizing a pattern so now I just try to recognize when I feel something is funny.”  She looked over at him, “Telling a joke still takes a degree of effort, however.”

             
A silent moment passed before she said, “You know I’m glad for your company as well.”  He glanced from the long stretch of dirt road ahead to her and back again more than a few times.  “I used to wait for you to call with your updates,” she admitted.

             
He smirked, “Really?”  She nodded.  “I always got the sense I was annoying you.”

             
“No,” she replied simply.  “I’m just not very good at things like that… or this… or anything much that involves other people.”

             
“You do fine,” he assured her.

             
“No I don’t,” she replied plainly.  “You were right when you said my thoughts and emotions are separate.  I can choose to act on or ignore them.”

             
“So when you slapped me?” he asked, touching a hand to where her’s had struck him.

             
She laughed a bit.  “Acting on them.”  A moment passed before she said, “Sorry for that.”

             
He shook her off, “I deserved it.”

             
“No you didn’t,” she told him.  “You were right.  Anything between us is an experiment.  It’s a test to see how much I can feel, if I’m even capable of a connection like other people have.  It would be selfish.  I hurt you all ready.  I would hurt you more.”

             
“What makes you say that?”

             
“The facts.  The hardware in my brain impedes many of the chemicals that are responsible for emotions.  I feel them, they’re just not as intense and I have more control over them.  I can dull them but I can’t make them sharper.  It’s how I was able to watch that footage of Rain.  Though it’s also why I didn’t cry, and even I don’t like that.  She was my best friend.  I should have cried.”

             
He nodded.

             
“I do like you,” she told him.  “I don’t want to experiment on my friends.”

             
Breaker’s Bay was one of three places on the main continent that docked boats.  They used them to transport goods that Blue Moon didn’t deem worthy of one of their air transports.  On other planets there wouldn’t have been need for boats at all, but Saffron was red flagged and grounded, and that meant only the government had access to anything that might take to the sky.

             
It was bad news for most people on Saffron, but for Quey and his crew, it was a mighty fine stroke of luck.  If the civilian transports hadn’t been grounded they’d have to take one of those to Topaz and there was something about flying that made people feel a need to scrutinize everyone partaking.  Boats, however, were ignored.

             
“You know who we’re meeting and where?” Quey asked Rachel during their last pit stop, less than twenty miles from the town.  He’d wanted to press on but after the waste it was the first clean bathroom they’d found and the women wanted to stop, save Ryla who didn’t seem to care.

             
“Guy named Troy,” she replied.  “We’re supposed to meet him at the docks.  You look over the bases yet?”

             
He looked over at her, the sunset glistening in her light brown hair.  “Figure we’ll have time to decide on the boat.”

             
She nodded.  “You really think we can pull this off?”

             
Quey shrugged, “Hell I don’t know.”  He watched Leone, Amber and Natalie returning from the bathroom.  “Nothing seems to make much sense anymore.”

             
Rachel agreed, silently, and then they parted for their vehicles.  The sky was darkening as they turned their engines over and rolled back toward the highway.

             
The last stretch of road between the rest stop and Breaker’s Bay seemed to go on longer than the nearly six hundred kilometers that had come before.  “It’s always the longest,” Quey sighed.  Ryla looked over at him and he said, “The last bit of road.  It always seems to be the longest part.”

             
“But it’s shorter,” she said.

             
“Yeah, I know.  It’s in your head.  Perception and anticipation.  You feel like your almost done so you want to be done and so it seems to take forever to be done, or something like that.”

             
“Hum,” she sighed, ponderous.  “That’s interesting.  Maybe it’s time I asked you some questions.”  He looked over at her.  “About how you work.”

             
His eyes widened slightly as he realized for the first time—as ashamed as he was by that fact—that he was as peculiar to her as she was to him.  “Go for it,” he agreed, and she did.

             
“So time can seem faster or slower even though its not?”  Was the first of many questions she squeezed into the twenty-minute drive.  She was fascinated by the idea of perception.  When he told her about how two people could witness the same event but remember it differently she told him, “That’s not true.”

             
“It is,” he assured her.  “The jist of things’ll be the same but details can change.”

             
“Like?”

             
“Like exactly what words were said or the color of things.”

             
“You’re tricking me.”

             
He assured her he wasn’t and did his best to explain, when people can’t remember they fill in the blanks and it’s hard for their brains to know the difference.  She was fascinated by this anomaly and wanted to ask him about the way he thought and his senses and memory, how it worked for him.  Of course they were on the last leg and it was over too quick for them to get to all of that.  When they crossed into Breakers Bay she found she was disappointed and thought for a moment she might have felt the briefest sense of what he was talking about.  The time, though it passed no faster as far as she could tell, had been too brief.

             
Life on the docks, loading and unloading ships, had left Troy haggard.  His hair was thin and in need of a trim, his teeth were crooked and yellow, his skin was dark brown and ashy.  The boat he led them to was in comparative shape.

             
The night was thick with cloud cover above the docks but the sulfur lights illuminated them and the ship with their deep yellow glow.  They could see the flat deck of the ship where thousands of tons of cargo could sit.   The boat was empty at present, and would remain that way through their voyage.

             
“This boat was headed east anyhow, so it in’t much out da way ta ride you over ta Topaz,” Troy informed them in his cracked voice.  He coughed and then hacked up a chunk of flem and spit it out onto the dock.  “Trip should take two and some change in days,” he added.  “Boat leaves wit the sun.  You can wait on board if you like, get settled.  Not much on shore I kin offer in da way ah lodging,” he informed them.

             
“Boat’ll do,” Quey replied, extending a hand.  Troy nodded as he shook it.

             
“Need any ting,” he trailed off momentarily, “you know… fore you leave lemme know and I’ll git it on board fore ya sail.”

             
“Thanks,” Quey said.  “I think we’re good though.”

             
He started away, then stopped and turned back.  “Eh.”  Quey looked at him and he asked, “What cha gunna do wit dem?”  They looked at the vehicles and Quey realized he hadn’t given it much thought.  They couldn’t get them on the ship so he said, “Why, you want ‘em?”

             
Troy scratched his head.  “Yer ways bin paid, but, you know, a tip.”

             
Quey smiled.  “We sail and they’re yours if you want ‘em.  Just remember there’s some nasty men looking for the likes of us and they might just remember what we were driving.”

             
Troy scratched his head and shrugged.  “Pain da cars, trucks good fer parts at least.  Mmm,” he grunted.  “I’ll come by, git ‘em in da morn.”

             
“Sure.”

             
Troy gave one last grunt that might have been, ‘bye,’ and then he walked slowly from their sight, favoring his left leg.  It was a tough life for men like him.  Men the corporation didn’t see potential in.  Men who didn’t get a place in the cities working in an office.  Quey felt sorry for him and all those like him.

             
He noticed the others collecting some of the luggage and did the same before heading toward the boat.  Ryla was herding her robots out of the back of the truck and walked with one to either side.

             
The captain was a tall man, six two or there abouts, with strong arms and a round belly.  His hair was thick and dark and so was his beard, though both were neatly trimmed.  Quey set down the bag in his right hand to shake the captain’s as he boarded.  He could feel the might in the man’s grip and knew if he wanted to he could crush his hand.

             
“Names Captain Theodore Nelson,” he said in a gruff voice that boomed over the sound of the sea lapping at the docks.

             
“Quey Von Zaul, lacking in title at the moment but once held the seat as chili champion of the north west bay.”

             
Nelson laughed heartily, “Fair enough champ,” he said as Quey boarded his ship.  As the others stepped on he made the introductions for them and when the robots rolled aboard he noted the man’s furrowed brow.

             
“Just some friends,” he assured the captain.  “Hope that won’t be a problem.”

             
Bowserbot rolled over to the big man and scanned him.  He peered at the turtle painted on its chest and noted, “That is the strangest…”  He inspected the bot a moment longer before looking over at Mechaganon.  Then he asked, “What do they do?”

             
“Observe mostly,” Ryla said, her voice seemed tiny in contrast to the captain’s.

             
Nelson looked at her and nodded slightly.  “You’re an odd bunch, aren’t you?”  Before they could answer he went on.  “No matter, ways been paid and so long as you respect the ship I think we can be friends till your port of call comes up.  Benny’ll show you to the corridors.”  Nelson stood tall, looking across the deck at a young man with bulging Muscles and light hair and bellowed, “Benny!”

             
The man hurried over to them and stood tall before the captain.  “You know the ones?” Nelson asked.

             
“Yes sir,” Benny replied.

             
“Then off wit you,” he finished before turning and walking off.

             
Benny gestured for them to follow him and they did.  They followed him through a metal entryway, then down a set of metal steps where they got to witness the robots trick to dealing with steps, and finally through a metal corridor to a cluster of closed metal doors.  “These six are yours,” he told them.  “Kitchen’s at the end of the hall on the left.  Shitters just around that first corner on the right.  All set?”