Steal Across the Sky

by Nancy Kress

  “She’s a perfect example of what psychologists call ‘situationally acquired narcissism.’ I think that by now that woman has confused herself with John the Baptist—if not with Christ himself. Savior and prophet.”

  “Maybe,” Soledad repeated.

  This time he caught her reserve and changed the subject. “Do you remember Frank Olenik? He witnessed on Susban A.”

  “The ex-cop? I didn’t interact much with him at the Dome, but I remember him. Why?”

  “My government contact is bringing him here to see me this afternoon.”

  Soledad sat up straighter. Lucca never allowed anyone to visit him, not even the other Witnesses. In fact, she was surprised that he took her calls. But, then, loneliness drove most people to at least some human contact. She’d always had Fengmo.

  She said, “And you’re seeing Frank why?”

  “I’m told he has important information about his own witnessing which he has told no one before, but which I will want to hear.”

  “Why would you want to hear it?” None of this made sense.

  “Because,” Lucca said, and she heard in his voice the very Lucca-like mix of skepticism, intelligence, and permanent underlying anger that he could not acknowledge even to himself, “Frank says his information will change everything.”

  42: CAM

  THE MORNING AFTER THE SHOOTING, Cam slept late. She was shocked—ten o’clock! She hadn’t slept till ten since before she became a Witness.

  Even more shocking, she hadn’t dreamed of Aveo or Kular.

  Sitting up in the bedroom of her hotel suite, Cam put her head in her hands. No nightmares, but two more people dead because of her, and some Chinese guy in a coma. She’d been told that much late last night, or rather early this morning, by Angie Bernelli, after Cam had finished being interviewed by everybody in the world. The NYPD, reporters, the Agency. It had all gone on for hours.

  The two people who’d died, and who’d tried to kill her—were they right this minute standing here in Cam’s bedroom before setting out on the second road, screaming at her? Not yet, I don’t want to go, I have kids and a wife and a mission to kill you and all the other false prophets like you who—

  “Ms. O’Kane?”

  —are killers themselves, you killed me you killed them all—

  “Ms. O’Kane!”

  “Oh! Sorry, Jen—what is it?” Her secretary, a scarily intelligent girl supplied by Angie Bernelli, stood diffidently in the bedroom door.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but you have a visitor. Angie’s not here and I didn’t know if you’d want him to come up or not—it’s J. S. Farrington.”

  Cam felt her eyes widen. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Buzz him up and give him some coffee or something. I’ll be five minutes.”

  Cam threw on a robe, brushed her teeth, and slashed on lipstick. Good enough—the dreamless sleep had helped her appearance. Automatically—not from design, Farrington must be over sixty—she left the top buttons of her robe undone.

  He stood when she entered, which confused her. Should she stay standing now, too? But Angie, who had arrived while Cam primped, stayed seated and so Cam sat, too, and Farrington followed.

  “I’m very glad to meet you, Ms. O’Kane.”

  “Call me Cam.” He wasn’t handsome—bald and stooped, with ears that stuck out—but he seemed easy to be with, even a bit down-home. He had very small, very bright brown eyes.

  “ ‘Cam,’ then. First let me congratulate you on your successful lecture tour and hope that last night’s mess isn’t going to interrupt it.”

  “It’s not,” Cam said, although she hadn’t really decided that until this moment.

  “What you’re doing is important,” Farrington said. “I’ve always believed in life after death, and you’re getting the word out in a way that young people can understand. There’s something else I’ve always believed in, and that’s space travel, as you probably already know.”

  “Yes.” Why was Angie scowling?

  “If humanity doesn’t expand out into space, we have no guarantee that our race will continue past any catastrophes to Earth. Man-made catastrophes or otherwise. Now I’m going to come right to the point, Cam. Farrington Tours would like to offer you a free trip back to the moon. That’s a two-million-dollar value. But we’ll take you gratis if you let us photograph you at Luna Station and outside the Atoner Dome, for our ad campaigns. That’ll mean publicity for both of us, and for space exploration. Everybody wins.”

  Everybody wins. Had Aveo ever described a kulith move in which everybody won? Cam couldn’t remember, but she suspected not. Kulith is a mirror of the mind that produces life, Ostiu Cam.

  Angie, still scowling, said, “Mr. Farrington, there are security risks in your proposal, and after last night—”

  “We know that,” he said. “But all our employees and guests are screened very carefully, Agent Bernelli, and both Earth Base Alpha and Luna Station have state-of-the-art security. I believe we can guarantee Cam’s safety.”

  “There are no guarantees where security is concerned,” Angie said flatly.

  “I meant, of course, relatively speaking.”

  Farrington looked at Cam hopefully, and Angie looked at her disapprovingly. All at once Cam was sick of them both—what was this but more pressure? Or was it the Atoners she was really sick of? Here she was, doing her best to spread their message just as they wanted, and what were they doing? Where was the promised atonement? Or—

  —something she barely dared admit to herself—

  —was she it? Was this all that the Atoners were going to do about their monstrous crime, just let Cam O’Kane, alone of The Six, spread the word and get shot at while doing it?

  “I think,” she said carefully, “that I’d like more time to think about your offer, Mr. Farrington.”

  “All the time you like.” But he seemed startled. Obviously he’d expected her to jump at his offer like a hungry dog at meat.

  She was getting tired of jumping at bait.

  Angie gazed speculatively at her, as if assessing Cam’s thoughts. Well, let her. Cam was doing what she had to, what was right, but that didn’t mean it was always easy. If Agent Bernelli thought it was, then fuck her.

  Later, after Farrington had left and Cam had showered and dressed and they were all preparing to leave for whatever city she was supposed to perform in next, Jen came shyly up to Cam. “There’s something I want to say, if it’s okay.”

  “Go ahead,” Cam said. Jen was in fact two years older than her but seemed to Cam like a child. Jen had never burned down men with a laser gun, never held a dying friend in her arms, never seen a child spitted like a chicken because it threw a pebble.

  Jen blurted, “A year ago I lost my faith in just everything. It was horrible. I didn’t want to live. But you’ve given my faith back to me. Because of your message about the afterlife, I know that God exists, and so I just want to say thank you. Because of you, I know now that absolutely everything that happens, happens for the best.”

  Cam stared at her. Finally she said, “You’re welcome,” setting out the words very carefully, as if they were fragile as non-bulletproof glass.

  43: E-MAIL

  Subject: recent fiasco

  Date: February 13, 2021

  From: J6

  To: D4

  what the fuck happened with that stupid raid on cam o’kane and soledad arellano?? i told you dave that we changed direction and are going after the bigger goal!! command is really pissed they say if you can’t control your own people better than that then liquidate your cell NOW. it better not happen again i mean it and so do they

  44: FRANK

  THE DRIVE FROM OHIO to Niagara Falls took only five hours. Jim Thompson drove and Frank didn’t break the silence between them very often. Jim was waiting for Frank to tell him why he wanted to see Lucca Maduro, and Frank wasn’t going to tell. Eventually Jim snapped on the radio and they listened to a successi
on of country-and-western stations, each swelling, sustaining, and then fading out, like flowers. Or lives.

  Frank wondered if Sara Dziwalski liked flowers. Probably, most women did, but what kind? She wasn’t a roses kind of girl—roses were too dressy, too formal. Maybe daisies, or those little purple things that smelled so good. How much would it cost to wire flowers to Texas? Maybe he could—

  “This is it,” Jim said, his first words in two hours. Frank saw the blue gleam of a bridge rise above the jumble of buildings and trees of some sort of park. “You want to see Niagara Falls, as long as we’re here?”

  “Nah,” Frank said. Although he’d never seen the Falls, he had more important things on his mind. Jim should, too—why did he want to tour Niagara Falls? It must be one more attempt to soften Frank up, get him to spill his information. Nuts to that.

  “Okay.” Jim disappeared into a low building. Ten minutes later, they drove across the border into Canada. Frank had no trouble spotting the car trailing them, but he felt no rancor about it. Guys were just doing their job.

  They drove up the Queen Elizabeth Highway toward Toronto but then veered north. Frank wasn’t sure what he expected, but when Jim stopped the car it wasn’t what actually lay in front of him. No concrete barriers, no foot patrols, nothing like the fortress he expected. Just a high adobe wall with an iron gate set into it and a single, bored guard.

  Jim caught Frank’s expression and grinned. “Oh, he’s got it, all right. The security. It’s just the hidden, state-of-the-art kind that doesn’t annoy the neighbors.”

  The guard shot his and Jim’s retinas, which annoyed Frank—how did Lucca, a private citizen, get Frank’s bioinfo? It must be some arrangement between their governments. Frank and Jim walked through three separate detector frames—metal, explosives, and what?—and left the car behind at the gate.

  Walking up the drive, Frank said a quick prayer. He still didn’t see much security, but he believed Jim that it was there. Patches of snow dotted the dormant lawn. The house was large but not really rich looking. A servant let them in, and Frank revised his opinion. He stood in a foyer built of materials he couldn’t recognize but which looked expensive. Creamy white stone floor, walls such a deep, rich red that it couldn’t be just paint, weird crumbling statues in niches, and a huge bouquet of fresh flowers on a fancy table that looked hundreds of years old.

  “This way, please,” the servant said, and Frank disliked him for his accent, his uniform, his chilly courtesy. He led them to a small room lined with books where Lucca Maduro, dressed in jeans and sweater, sat in a leather chair next to a real fire.

  Maduro rose, shook hands, asked about their trip. It was the same as with the servant: chilly and polite. “Would you like some wine? I can offer you a very good Sangiovese from our own vineyard.”

  Frank said, “Can I have a beer?”

  “Certainly. Jim?”

  Frank blurted, “Jim isn’t going to sit with us. He’s agreed that I can talk to you alone.”

  “Fine,” Lucca said, unsurprised, “but he can still have some wine, yes?”

  “I’m driving,” Jim said with his easy smile, “but some coffee would be great.”

  The servant brought drinks and led Jim away, and Lucca and Frank settled into the leather chairs. Frank, more and more uncomfortable, wanted to get the whole thing over. He didn’t belong here. Cradling his thick glass stein between his hands, he plunged in.

  “Lucca, I’m here to tell you something and to make you a proposition.”

  “Go ahead,” Lucca said. His face gave away nothing.

  “Do I have your word that you won’t tell anybody what I’m about to tell you?”

  “No. If what you’re about to tell me is some sort of crime, or if it endangers anybody, I would feel bound to tell.”

  Holier-than-thou prick. But Frank needed Lucca’s help.

  “I don’t know if it’s a crime but—”

  “You’re an ex–police officer and you don’t know if you committed a crime?”

  Frank drank off his beer with one long chug and tried to hold on to his temper. “If I have, it’s only the crime of withholding information from my government, which has nothing to do with you since it isn’t your government. And it doesn’t endanger anybody.”

  Was that true? He couldn’t tell anymore. But surely not doing this would endanger a lot more souls. That thought, plus the beer going golden in his veins, steadied him.

  “If those two conditions prove to be true, then I give you my word to tell no one.”

  “Okay. Then here it is.” Frank leaned forward, clutching his empty stein. “When I witnessed on Susban A, I took something from a native. A lock of hair. When we walked from the shuttle to the ’Tonie base on the moon, before we reached decon, I hid the packet of hair under a boulder while I was choosing my souvenir rocks. The hair has a lot of follicle, with DNA.”

  Lucca looked stunned.

  “You’re rich. I want you to send me to the moon on that Farrington tourist shuttle. It costs two million dollars to go and they take you to see the Atoner Dome from the outside. I’m going to retrieve that hair and donate the genes to a biotech company so they can put them back into humans.”

  Lucca still stared as if he’d seen a ghost. The ghosts he didn’t even believe in, Frank thought, and felt a petty satisfaction in having impressed this jet-setter. A long moment passed.

  Finally Lucca gasped, “Why?”

  “Why did I do it? Because those genes were ours. Humanity’s. The ’Tonies had no right to take them from us, and it sure doesn’t look like they’re willing to put them back.”

  “But why do you want to restore them?”

  Frank frowned. The guy wasn’t getting it. “They’re ours.”

  “Not for ten thousand years!”

  “Maybe not. But God put them there in the first place, and He wanted us to have them. He wanted us to be able to see our dead for a little while so we’d all experience directly His infinite mercy in providing life after death. It was a gift to aid faith, and it was taken from us.”

  Lucca got up and poured himself another glass of wine. It shook in his hands.

  Frank said, “I know you don’t believe in God or Heaven or anything. Your loss. But look at it this way: You think this is all just telepathy, and here’s your chance to prove it. If I’m wrong and you’re right, then after scientists put the genes back, kids will grow up telepathic and everybody will buy your version.” Except that Lucca’s version was wrong.

  Lucca sat in his chair and stared at the fire, not drinking his wine. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through, Frank. If you succeed in getting to the moon, the tourist agency would never allow you to go EVA. If you did, the government would discover your . . . your packet of hair and take it away from you. If they didn’t, you would never be able to just hand it over to some biotech agency—those companies are under constant and intense scrutiny from your FDA, and they must go through fully documented clinical trials, and they’re not allowed to experiment with germ-line cells anyway.”

  Frank didn’t know what “germ-line cells” were—he wasn’t talking about diseases, for God’s sake. His anger returned. “Are you saying you won’t help me?”

  “I won’t help you.”

  “But your—”

  “You are the victim of what Freud called ‘the universal obsessional neurosis’—religion. You propose to deepen this obsession among people who will believe anything. Even if I thought your insane plan had a chance of succeeding, I wouldn’t help you. Have you considered for one moment the chaos that would result on Earth from reintroducing a telepathy gene to a planet—”

  “It’s not a telepathy gene!”

  “—already groaning under the weight of seven billion people? We’re already poised on the edge of war and drastic climate change and bankruptcy of—”

  Frank jumped to his feet. With all his strength, he threw his beer stein into the fireplace, where it shattered. “But you’re
not ‘poised on the edge of bankruptcy,’ are you, Maduro? You’ve got all the money in the world, but you’re too selfish to use it to help anybody else!”

  Frank’s rant stopped Lucca’s. He stared at Frank, bleakly but also with a condescension that made Frank want to throw something else. “You have no idea whom I help or do not help, Olenik. But not this. Never this. Now I think you’d better leave.”

  “Gladly!” But just before yanking open the door, Frank turned. “You promised me you wouldn’t tell anybody what I said.”

  “Yes. I promised.”

  “You going to keep that promise?”

  “Yes.”

  Frank saw that Lucca was agreeing so easily because he thought Frank could never bring off his plan. That made Frank even madder. He would show Lucca. Frank could do this—had to do this, because it was God’s work—and then rich-boy Maduro would be talking out of the other side of his fucking mouth.

  Frank slammed the door behind him and went to find Jim Thompson.

  BACK HOME, FRANK ANSWERED none of his parents’ questions and locked himself in his room. On his computer he checked what the other Witnesses’ moon rocks had gone for on eBay and got a nasty shock. The price ranged from $10,000 to $25,000. That was all; since the tourist shuttle, moon rocks were just not that special. Even people who didn’t have them knew they could get some—the shuttle base on Luna had a gift shop. The most Frank could raise on his rocks was probably no more than sixty or seventy thousand bucks.

  He got down on his knees beside his bed and bowed his head. The position felt a little peculiar; Frank had prayed sitting or standing since he turned ten. But this was a big request.

  “Dear God, please help me do Your work. Guide me to the right way to get the money to set right what the aliens screwed up, and I screwed up after them. I’m willing to put myself completely in Your service. Please guide me through Your son Jesus Christ, most holy redeemer.”