Steal Across the Sky

by Nancy Kress

  And the pregnant Kularian girl, unhurt because she wore the Atoner personal shield off which most of those bullets had ricocheted, and shouting at an empty patch of air beside the dead man’s body, just at head height for a standing man, words Lucca had not heard in nearly a year and didn’t expect to hear ever again: “Kla shulathewithoz, beenitu kla!”

  Not the second road! Not now!

  Diane Lovett stepped over him to go to Soledad. Another agent reached under the body beside Lucca, pulled the dead man’s wallet from his pocket, and tore it open. Into his handheld he rasped, “Who the fuck is ‘Carl Lewis’? . . . Well, run it now, damn it!” In the distance sirens began to scream. Lucca strained to hear over the noise—the fat woman had never stopped screaming nor the Kularian girl shouting—but there was no sound from Soledad.

  Lucca closed his eyes and gave himself to pain.

  71: CAM

  THE ATONER WAS SMALL. That was Cam’s first thought: Our whole species was changed by something so small and fat! Then she realized that maybe this wasn’t an Atoner at all, just a machine or a holo or something that humans hadn’t yet invented and couldn’t imagine. It must not be a real Atoner because it didn’t wear a space suit. It walked naked and alive on the dead surface of the moon.

  Maybe a yard high, with soft, faintly green skin that looked pasty and loose. Two fat legs and four, five, six arms . . . but they weren’t arms, they were vacuum hose–like things that each ended in four fingers. A head shaped like a funnel with the open top full of some writhy stuff like black worms, two eyes, a mouth but no nose . . . The fearsome Atoner, shaper of human destiny, looked like a seasick Pillsbury Doughboy on a bad hair day.

  “Hello, Cam. Hello, Frank,” it said, and it was the voice of Cam’s first interview, of the recordings of NASA and UN radio speeches, of Soledad’s tape on the shuttle in orbit over Kular the day Aveo died. “Give it to me, please.”

  “No,” Frank said.

  “Give it to me, please.”

  Frank ran, leaping in clumsy bounds away from and around the curve of the Dome, toward the rover. He ran, and then all at once he stopped running, so suddenly that his top half swayed back and forth, like a tree in a gale. Cam tried to lift her foot, and couldn’t. She, too, was rooted to the ground. It was the same rooting her personal shield had done on Kular, only not under her control. Or Frank’s.

  The Atoner, or Atoner-thing, waddled to Frank. Frank’s whole body stood motionless—at least Cam could move the top half of hers—but the little alien effortlessly lifted Frank’s gloved hand and removed the yellow packet.

  “I’m sorry,” it said in that same incongruously deep, creepily polite voice, “but you cannot have this. We watch Earth, you know. You cannot have this.” The Atoner waddled to the Dome. A section of the opaque gray wall slid open, revealing swirling gray fog. The alien went inside, the door closed, and Cam’s body was released from the shield.

  “You fuckers!” she screamed. Red mist settled over her brain—she could feel it, burning and stinging like a million flying fire ants. “How dare you, how could you, you—”

  “Cam!” Frank called, but she barely heard him. It all rushed over her, then—all the trying so fucking hard, trying on Kular and trying on Earth with all those lecture performances and trying on the moon, trying and trying and trying to get it right and every fucking time sabotaged by aliens who did—who didn’t— All the men she’d killed— Aveo—

  “You could have helped us!” she cried at the solid Dome. “You could have been our mentors, our . . . our interpreters, our fucking guardians! Your race could have helped ours to handle the new genes again, could have shown us the right road. . . . You could have been our big brothers!”

  Rushing over to the Dome, she beat on it with her gloved fists, sobbing and crying out, not even knowing what she said. “Brothers! Yeah, you were our brothers, all right—like Cain to Abel! You robbed us and then you kidnapped us and then you show up promising atonement and when there is no fucking atonement, all you do is rob us again— Those genes are ours, do you hear me, you bastards? Ours! Ours!”

  “Cam!” said Frank, pulling at her, trying to put the bulky inflated arms of the EVA suit around her.

  “—ours, and you could have been our guides, our guardians, you could have shown us how to play kulith better— What was it? Jealousy? Can we go on after death and you can’t so you took that knowledge away from us, was that it—”

  “We have to go, Cam. Air will run out. Cam—”

  “You could have been our bridge to the next stage for our entire race!”

  She let him lead her, still sobbing, back to the rover. In the air lock she collapsed against the wall. Frank stood close to her. As soon as possible—too soon, the air lock wasn’t fully pressurized—he pulled off his helmet. Then hers, and he stood even closer and put his mouth against her ear. With one hand he unsealed one of the pockets on his suit, shielding the action with both their bodies, the whole thing at double speed. He forced her head to look down, whispered to her, and resealed the pocket.

  Then it was over.

  Dazed, she heard the inner air-lock door slide open. Terry and Jane weren’t untied after all. But Terry had somehow gotten his boot off and lay on the floor, hands tied to the bench post where Frank had left him, one foot propped up on the console with his big toe on the radio key. He was talking, yelling, but Cam wasn’t listening.

  What Frank had shown her in his pocket was a duplicate dusty, filmy yellow cloth packet.

  What he said in her ear was, “Evidence tampering isn’t always a crime.”

  72: SOLEDAD

  NUMB, SOLEDAD KNELT OVER JAMES. The thing below her barely looked like James. Most of his face had been shot away. His bright blond hair matted with blood, still flowing . . . how could a person have so much blood? She laid a hand on his left thigh, one of the few patches of skin not torn or bloody, a glistening expanse of smooth, pale flesh over hard muscles, warm and wet.

  Wet, but not with blood. James had been in the shower. That was why he was naked. He’d been in the shower and he’d bolted out when he heard the girl answer the door because he didn’t know if she really understood how dangerous that was in this place, or if she was wearing her personal shield . . . as he was not. You didn’t wear a shield in the shower, how could you get clean . . . they were expecting a pizza, such an ordinary thing, but the bell rang too soon and James heard it and knew . . .

  “Soledad.” Very gentle. Soledad went on resting her hand on James’s warm thigh.

  “Soledad.” Diane’s hand on her elbow, guiding her, and Soledad rose. She dropped the blue cashmere sweater over James, as if to keep warmth in the body losing all warmth.

  “Lucca?” The word hurt, as if it traveled up her throat with stingers unfurled.

  “Shot, but I don’t think it’s serious. A ricochet bullet. Soledad, who is Carl Lewis?”

  Soledad looked, then, at the man she’d killed. He had been spraying bullets around the hallway like a gardener hosing plants. . . . No, that wasn’t right. Her mind wasn’t working right. Something was wrong with her memory. Carl Lewis had been firing at . . . at the girl. Yes. The girl wearing her personal shield because the Earth was a dangerous place and the Atoners wanted to protect her unborn baby. And James had not been wearing his shield because he’d been in the shower—

  Soledad squatted beside Lucca. His face contorted with pain, but he opened his eyes. “I’m sorry, cara.”

  “Did you know? About . . . her? Anything at all?”

  His eyes went wide and she believed him. “No, I didn’t know. I would not have . . . have brought you if . . .”

  “Easy, buddy,” said a medic who had somehow appeared, and Soledad was pushed aside. She straightened and found herself staring into the eyes of the pregnant child-woman from another planet. The girl was crying.

  “Did you love him?” Soledad asked. “Or was he just the stud that the Atoners chose to get the DNA back into the human genome?” But t
he English words must have been too sophisticated for her; uncomprehending, she turned away.

  Diane said to Soledad, “We have to get you out of here before anyone arrives. All of you.”

  “I’m going with Lucca. Is an ambulance—”

  “Agency chopper. Come!”

  Soledad heard the chopper then, although she couldn’t imagine where it could possibly land. The girl—where was she from? Kular? Susban? Londu?—had begun shouting again in her own language. Soledad walked by Lucca’s stretcher, reaching for his hand. He squeezed her fingers. She kept her gaze on him as Diane hustled them from the lobby, only looking back once to see if, somehow, an Atoner had appeared on the scene to witness firsthand the havoc its race had brought on hers. But, of course, there was no Atoner in the grimy Brooklyn hallway. They didn’t witness in person on any human planet; it was far too dangerous down there among the savages.

  73: TRANSCRIPT, OVAL OFFICE

  TAPE #17281

  Property of the White House

  CHIEF OF STAFF WALTER STEINHAUER (WS): “Ma’am, this—

  PRESIDENT: My God, Walter, what is it? You look like—

  WS: This just came from Selene City. . . . They have . . . a Farrington Tours rover. . . . You better read it.

  [long silence]

  PRESIDENT: Did they—

  WS: I don’t know!

  [long silence]

  PRESIDENT: [barely audible] Tell Colonel Shoniker I said to go ahead with his recommendations.

  WS: Judith—

  PRESIDENT: Do it. Now.

  74: FRANK

  FRANK THOUGHT RAPIDLY about the order of what should come next. Order was critically important. If he removed the yellow packet from his EVA suit before he untied Jane and Terry, Terry might see it or spy-eyes Frank didn’t know about might see. If he untied Terry first, he might have to scuffle with him. Frank couldn’t drive the rover. The miniscule john had no room to remove a space suit. Terry watched him with eyes more full of anger and bitterness than Frank would have thought possible, although at least the man had shut up.

  Frank began peeling off his suit. Cam’s was already down around her knees. She looked too happy, damn her. The woman just didn’t have a poker face. But the next moment he realized that he’d underestimated her: She was creating a distraction.

  “We saw an Atoner!”

  Both Terry’s and Jane’s gazes jerked toward her as if yanked on a rope.

  “The Dome opened and it just walked out! Little, squishy-looking, a tiny bit green, it had these wiggly worms for hair, sort of, it waddled like a duck because its legs were so fat. . . .” She babbled on. Jane clearly didn’t believe her. Frank couldn’t read Terry’s expression, but it didn’t matter. Frank had the hair—the real hairs, the ones from the child on Susban, with the real genes—out of the EVA suit and clutched in his hand. The filmy yellow material with its precious burden compressed to almost nothing. That was why he’d chosen that cloth.

  He said, “I’ll untie you as soon as I use the can,” went into the bathroom, and put the hair into the special pocket he’d sewn into the inside of his boxers. Even if he was forced to strip, the pocket wasn’t noticeable unless you were looking for it, and no one would be.

  When he came out, Cam had freed Jane and started on Terry. Terry stood and put his boots back on. He said nothing as he sat in the front seat and started the engine. But, of course, Cam felt compelled to talk.

  “We’re sorry, Terry. But please try to understand. So much happened to both of us out there, it changed us so much, and we just wanted to ask the Atoners why. But the Atoner that came out from the Dome wouldn’t say anything. He—it—just stood there, looked at us, and went back in. Still, we had to do it, everything that happened out there just keeps eating away at us until we could barely even function. . . . You have to understand!”

  “No. I don’t,” Terry said tonelessly while Frank shot Cam a look of dislike. He’d been in no danger of not functioning.

  Jane said, “I think you need professional help, both of you. I know a good psychiatrist in New York who—”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, Jane,” Cam said.

  The trip back to Luna Station passed in total silence, three hours of it, even Cam. Frank was grateful. He stared out the window at the arid moonscape and rehearsed the next steps. Could Farrington bring some sort of lawsuit against him and Cam? Maybe. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was to get the hair to a biotech company, an ethical one with no government ties, that would agree to clone the genes and help restore them to humanity. Maybe a fertility clinic would be best, so people could choose to have them implanted in embryos—could they do that yet? Frank wasn’t sure. But if they couldn’t, then the hair could be saved until the technology caught up.

  Maybe he should rent a safe-deposit box. Yes, that would be best. He hoped it didn’t cost too much. And a lawyer—did he need a lawyer? He didn’t really trust lawyers—every cop knew how lawyers could screw with legitimate charges against some scumbag and get him clean off. But the safe-deposit box, definitely—

  “We’re here,” Terry said. The rover drove into the clear plastic “garage” and it pressurized. The four of them got out, still in silence. The door to the Clarke Module opened. Terry and Jane went first and then, before Frank and Cam could pass through, the door was slammed shut.

  Cam cried, “They’re going to kill us! They’re going to depressurize—”

  “No.” Frank willed himself to calm. “No, they won’t do that.”

  They didn’t. But as his legs buckled and his head grew light, Frank knew what they had done. A knockout gas, an emergency contingency tool because tourists after all were selected only for their money and who was to say some of them might not be genuinely crazy. . . . Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and in the hour of our death. . . .

  He went down.

  WHEN HE CAME TO, he lay strapped in the Farrington shuttle. Cam lay unconscious in the seat next to him. No other tourists occupied the space-bus shuttle, but Terry sat at the controls and three other people, a crowd in the tiny space, stood gazing down at him. No weightlessness—they were either on the moon still or else on Earth. Frank craned his neck to see a window. Earth filled the sky, a glowing blue-and-white ball. So— still on the moon.

  “Can you see clearly?” a woman asked. She began resting boxes against his body and studying their small readout screens. A doctor.

  “Yes.”

  “Trouble breathing?”

  “No.” Dread began its slow climb along his spinal column. It didn’t matter what they did with him, but please don’t let them already have the packet. . . . He wore his own clothes, a good sign. Hail Mary, Mother of God . . .

  The doctor finished and a small man took her place. Frank hadn’t seen him at Farrington Tours. He must have come out from Selene City, that was the only other possibility—how long had Frank been unconscious?

  The small man studied Frank intently. He had a completely bald head like a peeled egg and very deep, almost black, brown eyes. He held up the yellow packet of hair. “Tell us about this, Frank.”

  Frank closed his eyes.

  Terry, apparently unable to contain himself any longer, burst out, “Didn’t you know that transmitters on your EVA suit operate continually to Luna Station even if you cut off rover-to-suit communication? No, you didn’t, you thought you’d get away with—”

  “That’s enough, Terry,” the bald man said, with unmistakable authority.

  Enough. Too much. Game over. But Terry was right: Frank hadn’t known about the continual transmission. That fact about the EVA suits hadn’t shown up in his online research, probably by design. Caught in pixels, all of it: the Atoner, the hair, his switch. He’d fooled the Atoner but not his own kind. He just hadn’t known.

  75: FROM THE JOURNAL OF

  ANTHROPOLOGY

  Publisher: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

  ISSN: 13560123

  OCLC
: 60577118

  LCCN: 2005-236986

  ROADS, LADDERS, AND MOUNTAINS: AN OVERVIEW OF AFTERLIFE MYTHS AMONG AMAZONIAN TRIBES AS COMPARED TO PRELIMINARY REPORTS FROM KULAR, SUSBAN, ET AL.

  by Susan L. Jemison, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, and E. M. Kubasak, Chair, Department of Anthropology, Eastern New Mexico University

  Abstract

  Although described by “Witnesses” untrained in anthropology, the alleged afterlife myths reported by Andrew DuBois, Sara Dziwalski, Christina Harden, John E. Jones, Lucca Maduro, and Francis Olenik should be of interest to scholars concerned with the formation, propagation, and maintenance of cultural beliefs concerning the existence of life after death. Of particular interest are various close parallels between these “extra-solar” beliefs and myths found among three indigenous Amazonian peoples. These parallels are examined in terms of death rites, prayer, tribal religious leadership, and socialization of the young.

  76: FOUR

  SOLEDAD STOOD BY LUCCA’S bedside in a facility—it wasn’t exactly a hospital—that she hadn’t known existed. Nor did she know where it was, except that from the window she could see a rocky shore and what looked like a very cold ocean. Whatever it was, it included an OR, to which Lucca had been rushed at the same time that an entire medical team arrived by another helicopter. He now lay unconscious in this small sunny room with a bulky dressing on his leg, antibiotics dripping into his arm, and guards at his door.