Steal Across the Sky
Page 5
27
Sex
M
F
F
M
F
M
Nationality
German
American
French
British
Indian
Italian/
British
(dual
citizen)
Residence
Bonn,
Germany
Jay,
Nebraska,
U.S.
Lyons,
France
London,
U.K.
Mumbai,
India
Cortona,
Italy
Religion
None
Methodist
Catholic
Jewish
Hindu
None
Education
(U.S.
equiv.)
B.S.
High
school
High
school
M.A.,
Ph.D.,
candidate
Ph.D.,
Yale
Graduate
work
(Oxford)
Occupation
Chemist
Waitress
Factory
worker
(cheese)
Student
Asst.
professor,
U. of
Mumbai
Family
firms
(multiple)
Military
service
Yes
No
No
No
No
No
Criminal
background
None
Shoplifting,
plus
juvenile,
sealed
Grand
larceny
None
None
None
Psychiatric
hospitalization
None
None
None
2 months,
depression
5 days,
anxiety
disorder
None
Marital
status
Married
Single
Divorced
Single
Single
Widowed
Family
Child,
parents
3 siblings
Parents,
1 sibling
Parents,
3 sibling
Parent,
no siblings
Parents,
6 siblings
Parent,
2 siblings
Politics
Christian
Dem.
Union
Unregistered
French
Socialist
Party
Labour
Bahujan
Samaj
Greens
IQ
145
105
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
(estimated
high)
Unknown
Languages
(besides
English)
German,
French
none
French
Some
Hebrew
6 Indian
dialects
Italian,
French,
some
Russian
Date
applied
April 10
April 9
April 13
April 10
April 11
April 21
Date
accepted
May 12
May 16
May 12
May 11
May 15
May 16
Summary
Analysis program #1. Identified Patterns: NONE
Analysis program #2. Identified Patterns: NONE
Analysis program #3. Identified Patterns: NONE
Analysis program #4. Identified Patterns: NONE
9: LUCCA
HE DREAMED, YET AGAIN, OF GIANNA. She walked across the Kularian steppe, walked right through one of the complicated and multi-rooted trees, and came to him, naked. Her smooth flesh gleamed insubstantially, but her eyes were her own, alive and sparkling, as she said, “I’m still with you, Lucca, even if I am dead. I—”
“Lucca! Lucca!”
He woke to Chewithoztarel crouching over his pile of blankets. Only by her voice was he sure it was her; the tiny hut was so dark that he couldn’t see even the outline of her small form. Hytrowembireliaz snored loudly, in counterpoint to his wife’s softer wheezing. Somewhere in the close, smelly dark, the other two girls also slept.
“You screamed,” Chewithoztarel said, from somewhere between fear and concern. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Lucca said. It came out as a gasp. “Go back to sleep.”
“People don’t scream when nothing’s wrong,” the child said logically. She didn’t move. Lucca had wished for curiosity among the Kularians, for a deeper connection to them, and now here it was and all he wanted was for her to go away. Gianna, walking toward him . . .
Chewithoztarel said, “Are you sick?”
“No.” . . . naked and insubstantial, walking through trees and . . .
“Are you going to start out on the second road?”
“No! Go to bed!” . . . naked and she said, “I’m still with you, Lucca, even if I am dead” . . . lies. All lies, delusions to comfort the desperate and the gullible. She wasn’t with him, would never be with him again, and he hated the dreams that offered lies instead of truth. There was no comfort in lies, and it was cruelty for his mind to cloak the lies in Gianna’s vanished love.
Chewithoztarel crept away. He heard her settle back into her own pile of rugs, and he smelled the fresh reek in the air as the blankets were disturbed. He would have liked to go outside, but that would surely wake everyone, and it was bitter cold out, and if the sky was overcast he wouldn’t be able to see anything in the vast, unlit dark. So he stared sightlessly at the ceiling and tried to hang on until morning.
“I DON’T KNOW if I can stand the whole winter here,” he said to Soledad on the commlink. It was the first time Lucca had made this admission to her, and maybe to himself. He hated saying it.
“If you’re absolutely strained to the limit, I’ll come get you,” Soledad said. “But I think you can make it to the end.”
“What end?” Lucca retorted. He and Cam were supposed to stay on their respective planets until they had “witnessed something that needs witnessing,” probably the vaguest instructions in all human history. On Kular A there was nothing to witness, nothing to report except endless fishing and hunting and dancing and winter sleeping so prolonged it was nearly hibernation. With his leg healing but not yet whole, sleeping was the only one of these activities that Lucca could take part in. But sleep brought the cruel, lying delusion that Gianna lived.
“Whatever end arrives,” Soledad said. “Are you sure you can talk this often? Where are you?”
“I’m nowhere, Soledad.” He sat on a blanket in the middle of empty space, white on the ground under a white cloudy sky, out of sight of the village and in sight of absolutely nothing else. Chewithoztarel had a way of sneaking up on him, but not here.
“Aren’t the Kulari suspicious that you go off three or four times a day to talk to me? What do they think you’re leaving the village for?”
“I don’t know. They’re never suspicious, never curious.”
“You know, I would change places with you in a minute.”
“I know you would, Soledad.” He was conscious of overusing
her name, of making it an anchor in the blank frustration of his days. She was his anchor. He didn’t want to commlink Cam, off having dramatic adventures on Kular B, and Soledad didn’t tell him much about Cam. She had tact, Soledad. Why hadn’t he slept with her instead of Cam, so typically brash and American, on the voyage out?
Because Cam looked a little like Gianna, even though no two women could have been more different, and Lucca had clutched at her like a drowning man. Stupido.
Soledad listened carefully to the translator uploads he sent as often as possible; she knew everything that happened—or, rather, didn’t happen, in this static environment—on Kular. She said, “I really do think you can manage this, Lucca. You’re stronger than you think.”
“Thank you. I better get back now. My ass is freezing.”
She laughed and clicked off. Bored—she must be so bored up there in orbit. But, of course, so was he down here. Hytrowembireliaz had said that spring would bring a trading trip over the mountains and, Lucca fervently hoped, a more complex and interesting society to “witness.” But Soledad had given him his coordinates on the planet; his shuttle had crashed pretty far north. Spring was a long time away.
Limping, leaning on his crude wooden crutch, he made it back to the village. Everyone was in the community lodge, where they spent most of the day. Shivering, Lucca crawled into his bed pile in Hytrowembireliaz’s hut, willing to trade lunch for privacy. But he wasn’t alone long.
Chewithoztarel bounced into the hut, bringing with her snow and cold. She sat at the bottom of Lucca’s bed pile and leaned toward him, grinning. One of her front teeth had fallen out this morning, and her gap-toothed smile might have looked cute to anyone who liked children more than Lucca did. Or who wasn’t so frustrated.
“I saw you!” the little girl said gleefully. “I saw you coming back from way over the hill! And Ragjuptrilpent saw you, too!”
Not Ragjuptrilpent again. Of all the parallel customs that could have evolved in Kularian childhood, why was the winner “imaginary friends”? But . . . what matter if Chewithoztarel had seen Lucca return from the plain? No one else would ever question him about it and she wouldn’t follow him, or if she did, he could just send her back. Kularian children were obedient to adults. Lucca’s private and sanity-saving contacts with Soledad could go on, privately.
Chewithoztarel said, “What is a ‘soledad’?”
SLEEP-TALKING. AN EASY EXPLANATION. In some unremembered dream he had called out Soledad’s name, and Chewithoztarel had overheard. The child denied this, looking a little frightened at Lucca’s savage expression, and he forced himself to smile. “I said ‘Soledad’ when I was asleep, didn’t I?”
“No. You said it outside. Ragjuptrilpent heard you. She told me.”
Lucca willed patience. “All right, she heard me. What else did she hear?”
“Just funny noises. Not real words. But you said ‘soledad’ many times and she remembered. What is a—”
“It is nothing,” Lucca said, and turned away. He didn’t like her listening to his sleep-talk. So often his dreams were of Gianna, who did not belong on Kular A, who no longer belonged anywhere in the universe.
Chewithoztarel said, “Nothing is nothing,” disgust and bafflement in her child’s voice.
The next time he went out on the plain, he called Soledad amica, which he had never done before. If Soledad was startled by this, she didn’t say so. Maybe she thought he was cracking up. Lucca said the word carefully and slowly, ten separate times. He had decided on it as he trudged out of sight of the village, and he had never called Gianna that. Or anyone else. It was a stupid and unnecessary experiment, but then, what else did he have to do with his brain?
When he returned, he found Chewithoztarel in the community lodge. She had just come in from building snow spikes, or whatever they were supposed to be, outside with her friends, and her little face was flushed rosy. Lucca sat down next to her.
“Did you have fun outside?”
“Yes! Did you see our seclis?”
The translator didn’t recognize the word, but Lucca nodded. “Yes. Very nice. Did Ragjuptrilpent help you build it?”
Her dark eyes widened. “No! She was with you!”
“Of course. With me.”
“She likes you,” Chewithoztarel said with her gap-toothed grin. Her mother called to her and the little girl jumped up, but Lucca put a hand on her arm. He kept the personal shield turned off all the time now; these people were not dangerous.
“Chewithoztarel, did Ragjuptrilpent hear me say ‘Soledad’ again?”
“I don’t know. I have to go now, Lucca, Mama wants me.”
He released her arm and she bounced off. But then she threw over her shoulder, “Oh, she just told me. You didn’t say ‘soledad.’ You said ‘amica.’ Bye!”
She ran to her mother, and he sat there, shattered and, all at once, unexpectedly afraid.
TELEPATHY. IT WAS THE ONLY THING his dazed mind could come up with. This must be what the Atoners had sent him here to witness. Had it evolved everywhere on the planet, or just here? Had it evolved at all? It must have, and he could see certain evolutionary advantages . . . better coordination of hunting parties and . . . and . . .
His thoughts shimmered like heat waves in the vineyards of home. He couldn’t seem to fasten onto any one idea, couldn’t seem to follow it logically through—Could these people read his mind? Was that why they were so reticent with each other: privacy taboos to compensate for no mental privacy?
No, there was still Chewithoztarel. If she could read his mind, she would have seen the image of Soledad and not had to ask what a “soledad” was. So she hadn’t seen into his mind. Perhaps the telepathy was language dependent, which would explain why all she had was a word, no images . . . or did she—What if the ability only came with puberty? Or maybe disappeared with puberty? Or if . . .
He couldn’t think. This was too large, too all-encompassing. It smothered his thinking, like snow smothering grass on the steppes. He needed to tell Soledad, tell Cam—Did the telepathy exist on Kular B, too? He needed to—
He needed to think. And he couldn’t seem to.
Nor could he get away to commlink anyone. It had begun to snow in earnest, thick white sheets that made even the closest huts invisible out the lodge window. Lucca would get hopelessly lost if he tried to go out on the plain. And if he went to Hytrowembireliaz’s hut, that monster child would surely follow. He would have to wait to spill this amazing news.
The dancing and foot stomping had resumed. Lucca sat in his corner, leaning on his wooden staff, watching the dancers. The women leaped as exuberantly as the men, their short hair crackling around their faces, their red teeth flashing. What did they know, what could they do, that he could not—and what did it have to do with the Atoners’ self-alleged crimes?
10: CAM
IT MADE NO SENSE. Aveo wanted to walk to the capital.
They lay on their beds in Escio’s tent, Aveo still asleep, in the very early morning. The naked little slave girl had crept in with water practically the second that Cam sat up and stretched on her pallet. The girl must have been lurking outside, which made Cam uncomfortable. Had she been there all night? The tent was warm enough, but most likely outside had turned cold, with no blankets and no clothes.
“Hello,” Cam had said, but of course it was in Pularit and the girl didn’t understand. She put down the two heavy pails of water, one by Cam’s pallet and one beside Aveo’s, and scurried away before Cam could rise.
Was Cam supposed to bathe in front of Aveo? Not going to happen. But she did turn off her shield to wash her face, neck, and hands, by which time the girl was back with two bowls. This time Cam caught her by the arm and held her fast.
“Cam,” she said, pointing to herself and smiling like an idiot. “You?”
The girl trembled. Up close, she looked even younger, maybe no more than twelve or thirteen. Cam caught the pungent odor of semen.
Son of a bitch. Escio?
Most likely. Every terrible story she’d ever heard of slave owners’ abusing their “property” raced into her mind, followed by a hatred so bilious she could taste it on her tongue.
Aveo awoke. “Let her go, Ostiu Cam. She’s frightened of you.”
“It’s not me she should be frightened of! That bastard raped her!”
Aveo looked puzzled, and Cam realized that they’d hardly given the translator any vocabulary for either “raped” or “bastard.” Or maybe Aveo just looked like that because he was part of the same rotten society that sold children into sexual slavery.
All at once she flashed on a sudden image of herself and Lucca naked in his bunk aboard the Atoner ship and her saying, “You’re too innocent, Lucca.” Because despite his having been married, his sexual repertoire seemed a lot more limited than hers. But Lucca had laughed and said, “I’m innocent? Oh, cara, you have no idea how much you don’t know about the world outside Nebraska.”
Aveo said, “Let her go, please.”
“Not until I at least get a name for her! She’s not an object!”
Aveo said something to the girl, who replied shakily. Aveo said in Pularit, “Her name is Obu.”
“And tell me how to say thank you in her tongue.”
“Dzazni.”
“Dzazni, Obu,” Cam said, and released her. Obu looked as if she’d been slapped. She ran out of the tent.
Aveo said, “We could debate slavery, Ostiu Cam, all morning, but it would be better if you ate your breakfast. We have a long walk ahead of us.”
“Walk?” she said blankly.
“To the capital. Did we not agree last night that you wish to go there, that Cul Escio conceives it as his duty to take you, and that I am to translate?”
“But not walk! We can go in my ship, of course.”
“Ah, you call it a ‘ship,’ not an ‘egg,’ ” Aveo said.
That was what the translator had decided to call it. For a brief moment Cam felt adrift; she didn’t understand the sounds she mouthed, and it was really the Atoners, through their translator, that were in control here. Then the unpleasant sensation passed. She possessed the translator, and the shuttle, and her personal shield, and no one on Kular could force her to do or go or be anything she didn’t choose.
Aveo, looking patient, said, “The ‘ship’ would, I think, frighten the king.”