by Nancy Kress
“He was lucky,” Diane said. “The doctor said the bullet ricocheted off the girl’s shield and tore into the quadriceps of his anterior thigh, but it missed the femoral artery. He may limp, but otherwise he’ll be fine.”
Soledad touched Lucca’s cheek. Lucky. Fengmo, James, Sara . . . but Lucca, at least, would recover.
“There must be more of them,” she said to Diane. “More pregnant girls with the pre-Atoner human genes. The Atoners wouldn’t stake their entire ‘atonement’ on just one pregnancy. Does the Agency know where any more of them live?”
Diane’s expression gave away nothing. “The aliens don’t inform us of their arrangements.”
Of course not. Just as James hadn’t told her about his double life, just as Lucca hadn’t told her about his pine-tree surveillance, just as Juana hadn’t told her about Carl Lewis. Just as the Atoners hadn’t told her what would follow her romantic, quixotic, utterly insane volunteering to be a Witness.
“Then they’re a lot like us,” she said tonelessly to Diane, and bent to hold Lucca’s hand.
* * *
FRANK, FREED FROM HIS HARNESSES, sat in the shuttle on the moon and sipped the coffee they’d given him. He knew what to expect. Questions and more questions, days of questions. He’d answer them all truthfully, because at this point, what would be gained by doing anything else? He would do his best to avoid any possible charges of obstruction of justice or interfering with an ongoing investigation or whatever else they could dream up. But he would also stick to his primary statement.
“The genes are mine, and I’ll sue in federal court to recover them.”
Col. Thomas Shoniker, who had indeed rovered in from Selene City, held the yellow packet in his large hand. “Frank, I feel duty-bound to tell you that if you don’t cooperate, you can be detained as a material witness and a security risk, practically indefinitely.”
“Only practically,” he said. He wasn’t giving up. You couldn’t trust the government. But he hadn’t trusted the Atoners, either, and eventually he’d beaten them. He’d rescued the genes that God had given to humanity from the aliens. Now, with Cam’s help, he had to rescue the genes from the feds. Fighting one, fighting the government—the same thing. Stay alert, trust no one, plan for contingencies.
Just the same.
LUCCA OPENED HIS EYES. He lay naked in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room under an unfamiliar yellow blanket. But there was Soledad, blessedly familiar, asleep in a chair with her head thrown back and her mouth open. His leg throbbed. He remembered everything.
“Soledad—”
Her eyes flew open. She’d been waiting for him. Something shifted in his chest.
“Are you all right? How do you feel?”
“Shot,” he said. “And you, cara?”
“Fine. You saved my life, you know.” She looked away. Sunlight from the window caught the glint of dried tears on her cheek.
He groped for firmer ground. “Who was Carl Lewis?”
“Diane says CCAD. They’ve shifted from trying to kill the original Witnesses to trying to kill the . . . the ‘brides’ the Atoners brought here.”
He tried to take this in. “How many brides?”
She shrugged. “Probably a lot, all over the world.”
That made sense. Young foreign brides who spoke no English were a commonplace in the great cities of the world. The Atoners knew that some of the girls might die, some miscarry, some be detected. They knew that nothing was certain and that things change.
He looked again at Soledad, dirty and bloody. Her tears were for James, but the concern furrowing her face was for Lucca.
Atoners must think a lot like humans, Lucca thought, because they were right: Things change.
CAM WALKED OUT of the main building at Edwards Air Force Base, NASA’s primary shuttleport since climate change had made Florida unusable, and into a blinding blaze of light. The California day was gray and overcast, but cameras flashed and robocams zoomed and a TV floodlight caught her square. Cam smoothed her hair, smiled, and stepped to the podium waiting for her on the tarmac.
“Cam! Cam! Cam!”
She held up her hand and the reporters quieted.
“Before you ask me any questions, I want to say something. Yes, it’s true that I’ve been answering questions for our wonderful government. Let me start by saying that I’ve been treated with the utmost respect, and that I’ve been happy to help. And now let me say what I know you’ve heard rumors about.”
She drew a deep breath. This was it. This was the performance of her life. Someone at Farrington Tours had leaked the story, probably selling it for a gazillion dollars, but she was its star. She and Frank, and Frank could never do this part. Only she could. Over the last few weeks she, the Agency, and an army of lawyers had worked it out: how much to tell, how much to hold back “for national security.” The scripting had begun even before Cam left the moon, and it was thorough and careful and balanced.
“Yes, the story is true,” she began. “I saw an Atoner on the moon. I— no, please wait, there’s more!—saw the Atoner because it came out to talk to me and another member of The Six, Frank Olenik. The experience showed me something important, which I’m now going to tell you.”
Colonel Shoniker watched her carefully. She could almost hear his mind: So far, so good.
Her mistake, she knew now, had been to believe that the aliens really would atone for their crime, really would set things right for humanity. Cam should have known better. The Atoners were just like human beings—they only went after what mattered to them. That’s what Cam herself had done when she’d volunteered to become a Witness, when she’d slept with Lucca, when she’d killed Escio and the others, when she’d brought Aveo to Kular A, when she’d become a media star. Aveo had tried to tell her: We play kulith to discover who we are, and who others are, and to foreshadow and so cause what will happen between us.
Cam knew now who she was and what she wanted to cause. The men she’d sent onto the second road were now beyond kulith, out of the game. But Cam was not and the Atoners were not—alike in that if nothing else—and Cam was going to win. She took a deep breath and stood up straighter.
Fuck the script.
“What I learned on the moon was that the United States government possesses the seeing-the-dead genes right now and will not release them unless we all demand it!”
The tarmac erupted into shouting, into official fury, into just the beginning.
PART IV
THE VERDICT
77: LAWSUMMARY.COM
CASE: Olenik v. United States, 2022
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
PLAINTIFFS:
Francis Michael Olenik
Camilla Mary O’Kane
American Civil Liberties Union
DEFENDANTS:
Thomas Sean Corino, Attorney General
Linda Amanda Molsky, Director, National Intelligence Agency
Colonel Thomas Shoniker, USAF
Special Agent James F. Thompson, NIA
Joel Simon Farrington
Terence Gary Siekert
Appeal from the United States District Court for Eastern Arizona
Argued January 3, 2022, Decision for Defendants
Reargued March 13, 2023, Decision for Plaintiffs
PRECIS: Olenik et al. brought an action challenging the right of the NIA and the U.S. Justice Department to confiscate, on grounds of national security, material of which the plaintiff claims personal ownership, said material consisting of hairs conveyed by alien shuttle by Olenik from Susban to Luna.
CURRENT STATUS: On Supreme Court docket for 2024
Information last updated: July 17, 2023
78: ST. VINCENT’S HOSPITAL,
MANHATTAN
THE CHOPPER FROM LAGUARDIA settled onto the hospital roof. Maduro security personnel jumped out and began their preliminary sweeps. Soledad and Lucca sat quietly, knowing the wait was inevitable, Lucca pulling at the collar
of his shirt in the summer heat. She smiled at him.
“You could have let me come alone, you know.”
“No. I could not.”
“An Italian Galahad,” she scoffed.
“An American Boadicea.”
She laughed. Lucca’s security chief opened the door and said, “Prego, Signora Maduro.” Soledad let him help her down and followed him through a doorway leading to the elevator.
Lucca watched until the door closed. He didn’t want to be in New York—no one not insane wanted to be in New York in July—but even less had he wanted Soledad to make the flight from Italy alone. Once he had lost Gianna. He would not lose another wife, even if that meant dying with her.
Dying. Lucca scowled at the city sweltering below. How many of those poor steaming souls had been caught by Cam’s nonsense? She was a huge international star now, more beautiful and flamboyant than ever, her lawsuit the cause célèbre of the century. And still a complete idiot. At least Soledad was too intelligent to talk any longer about Cam’s “afterlife”; Soledad hadn’t even mentioned it in over a year. Pure wish fulfillment, complete pathetic illusion. To think that once, on the voyage out, Lucca and Cam had—
Lucca pushed the thought away, as he routinely pushed away thoughts of Cam, of the Atoners, of everything that had happened three years ago. An aberration, a boil on his life. That life now was rooted where it belonged, in Tuscany with Soledad and little Angelina, now at home with her grandparents. His daughter was a perpetual astonishment, a miracle. To think that once Lucca had thought he didn’t like children! Che cretino.
“Aldo,” he said in Italian to the pilot, “there is no way to turn on AC without starting the chopper?”
“Non dire cazzate,” Aldo said amiably. Lucca, sweating, turned on his handheld. He got a children’s program in which cartoon animals named “Ready Freddy” and “Hurry-Up Hannah” jumped around with typical American frenzy. Ready Freddy was a scrawny chicken and Hurry-Up Hannah a rabbit in a purple hat. Lucca found a newscast.
“. . . marked the anniversary of the so-called ‘preggers murders,’ in which three young women in three different cities were simultaneously killed while in the shower,” said a blue avatar with macabre cheer. “All three women were pregnant at the time of the slayings, all three were recent brides, and all three were undocumented aliens whose entry into the United States has not been traced. Debio Stevenson, Falewithozkith Stein, and Hrill DiPetrio were in different trimesters of pregnancy, but none of their unborn infants survived the grisly shootings. One husband, American Jon Stein, also perished in the attacks. Law-enforcement agencies in New York, San Diego, and Topeka are sharing information on the three cases. Said Topeka Police Chief Darryl Mendon earlier today, ‘The similar pattern suggests the same killer or killers for all three women. We will get this guy!’ Nonetheless, no arrests have ever been made in any of the tragic murders.
“Now, turning to that wildfire still burning in Colorado . . .”
Lucca flipped his wrist. The local police never would “get this guy.” Possibly the federal government already had, just as they had gotten Carl Lewis with no one ever learning what had really happened in Brooklyn. A drug deal gone bad was the official story, an undercover agent did the shooting, an ongoing internal investigation . . . What was it Soledad said? “Blah blah blah.”
Soledad had taught Angelina to say that phrase, too. On her, it was very cute.
A sudden powerful longing to be home with his daughter took Lucca. Tuscany, with the dusty vineyards and soft blue hills and red poppies . . . And yet, strangely, when he thought of peaceful Villa Maduro, he also often thought of that peaceful frozen town on Kular. Chewithoztarel would be a young woman now. Was she married? Was she pregnant?
He sat in the chopper and sweated and waited for his wife.
ACCOMPANIED BY BOTH HOSPITAL and Maduro security, Soledad moved quietly through corridors cleared for her. She nodded thanks at everyone and slipped alone into the room at the end of a hall devoted to terminal patients.
She barely recognized him. Three years in a coma had reduced his already small stature to that of a child. He lay on his side, hooked to tubes and more tubes, his mouth slightly open. His gums had receded around his teeth. His bones looked like an underfed bird.
Carefully she took his hand. “Hello, Fengmo.”
Hello, Ladybliss. But she would never hear that again. This was her last trip to New York.
“Fengmo, it’s Soledad. I’m here.” She paused, wondering what else to say, shocked that she didn’t know. After all those years of telling each other everything . . . but that was the past, a different place with a different geography. Then, all at once, she found what she wanted to say.
“I still don’t know if there’s life after death, Fengmo. I don’t talk about it anymore with Lucca, but I still don’t know. Maybe he’s right and it is stress- induced telepathy in the presence of death. Or maybe Cam’s right and it’s a real perception of something we’ve lost. Whatever it is, it’s coming back to us. The Atoners did atone, after all. But—and here’s the big ‘but,’ dear heart—it doesn’t matter. What matters is—”
She stopped, appalled. She’d been going to say, What matters is life here now. That’s what we should give our souls to. But Fengmo had no real life now, and perhaps no soul left, either. She could not say those words to him. She had so much of everything now—Lucca and Angelina and their sweet life in Italy—while Fengmo had lost everything, and for her sake.
So she said instead, “What matters is that I will always love you,” kissed him, and left.
Security waited for her. As she left the corridor, they admitted a woman who’d been waiting patiently to come in. She held a toddler by the hand. The two women smiled at each other, the young mother looking sympathetically at Soledad’s tears.
THAT ONE, she lost a person to death, the young woman thought. Perhaps I will be so lucky and that horrible old man will die.
She was visiting her father-in-law, a duty visit. She had not wanted to go, nor to bring her son, but her husband had insisted. “It’s Dad’s only grandchild,” he’d pleaded, and she had given in.
Now she held the child up for the dying man to see, and he smiled at the boy. He never smiled at her. Once she had heard him call her a “dirty foreigner.” Her English was not good, but it was good enough for that. She set the child on the floor and sat in a chair, determined to stay the entire half hour she had promised her husband, even if the old man never looked at or spoke to her. He had no manners, that one.
They sat in mutually stubborn silence. After five minutes, the woman dozed off. She was pregnant again and always tired.
The child gazed at his mother with big dark eyes and toddled out the door.
FENGMO STOOD, bewildered, by a bed with a wizened body in it. Where was he? How had he gotten there?
A child staggered into the room, a small brown boy with lively eyes. He stared up at Fengmo.
“Hi, you Weady-Fweddy, you twaveler-on-the-second-woad,” he said, and smiled like sunlight on blinding snow.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Part I: The Crime
1: Lucca
2: Transcript, “Witness” Interview
3: Aveo
4: Lucca
5: From Rewired And Hacked In, Editorial Column
6: Cam
7: Aveo
8: Data Analysis
9: Lucca
10: Cam
11: Aveo
12: Press Conference
13: Lucca
14: Cam
15: Letter From A Witness
16: Lucca
17: www.urgentaliencrisis.org
18: Aveo
19: Lucca
20: Advertisement
21: Cam
22: Lucca
23: “Schlepping To The Stars”
24: Aveo
25: Luc
ca
26: Cam
27: Soledad
Part II: Amicus Curiae
28: Soledad
29: From The Oprah Winfrey Show
30: Frank
31: Soledad
32: Intelligence Briefing
33: Frank
34: Supermarket Kiosk Display
35: Cam
36: Soledad
37: A Statement From Congressman Harry Melson (R-GA)
38: Soledad
39: Frank
40: Transcript, Oval Office Tape #16,845
41: Soledad
42: Cam
43: E-Mail
44: Frank
45: D-Vid Game
46: Soledad
47: Frank
48: Focus Group Report
49: Soledad
50: Cam
51: From The New Yorker
52: Soledad
53: Frank