Steal Across the Sky

by Nancy Kress

  “Ciao.” There was a note in her voice that Lucca couldn’t quite name, but it was not damsel-in-distress. She wasn’t Cam. To his surprise, the person her tone reminded him of was Chewithoztarel.

  SHE CLIMBED INTO THE CHOPPER, shivering in a too-thin jacket and carrying nothing but her purse. “Lucca! I thought you’d send somebody, and I didn’t think you . . . yourself, I mean . . .” The flurry of stammering passed as quickly as it arrived. Quietly she said, “Thank you.”

  “Andiamo, Aldo.” The chopper lifted.

  “Where are we going? And is he—” Soledad waved at the pilot.

  “Aldo has been with me always. He is completely reliable. Yes, Aldo?”

  “Non dire cazzate.”

  Lucca turned to Soledad. No tears, just that look of focused intensity, and again he thought of Chewithoztarel. “We are going to a place owned by a friend. It’s not the place on the flight manifest, but we’ll sort that out later. And yes, that friend is also reliable. She’s an American I knew at Cambridge.”

  “You have a lot of friends,” Soledad said, and this time he couldn’t make out her tone at all.

  THE CHOPPER FLEW WEST. Lucca didn’t try conversation over its noise. Two hours later it set down on a tiny snow-covered field on the side of a mountain in the Allegheny range in Pennsylvania. Aldo took off. Lucca lugged his large leather suitcase through the snow and keyed in the door code of Anna Parker’s parents’ vacation cabin.

  Anna had been Gianna’s best friend at Cambridge. They’d become a foursome: Gianna and Lucca, Anna and her English boyfriend, Michael. GLAM, fellow students had nicknamed them, half-derisively and half-enviously. Anna’s mother had been a semi-famous movie star who overdosed on heroin when Anna was six. Her father was a studio executive, a brash and unkind man who hadn’t wanted children in the first place. Anna was waiflike, bruised looking, as if she thought her exterior should reflect her inner state. Gianna had laughed at her, mothered her, become her anchor. Michael had done the same thing. Since Gianna’s death, Lucca had not been able to bear seeing Anna, but he still trusted her. It turned out that Anna, now living and working in San Francisco, had been stronger than any of them. Michael was an alcoholic, Gianna was dead, and Lucca had let despair make him the tool of aliens as deceptive as the Medici.

  “It’s nice,” Soledad said of the cabin, and Lucca laughed. It was not nice. Crude bunk beds, propane stove, Coleman lanterns, a wooden table and four chairs, rough wooden shelves holding canned goods. Anna’s father had bought the place as a hunting lodge, an exercise in old-style macho, and then never once hunted. Too busy, too important, too Hollywood. Anna had liked “the lodge” precisely because her father didn’t.

  “Lucca, what are we going to do here? Besides hide?”

  “What do you want to do?”

  She didn’t answer. He lit the stove and lantern, waiting. Finally she said, “I want to find James. I already called someone, just before I called you.”

  He straightened from the stove. “Called someone? Who?”

  “A journalist that already knows who I am. My sister outed me.” Her mouth twisted unpleasantly. “He wanted an interview with you and tried to pay me to set it up. I said no. But he’s just inventive enough and sleazy enough to be able to track James, and so I—”

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Soledad.” He doubted that any “sleazy journalist” would be able to find James.

  “I didn’t tell Carl much,” she said quickly. “Just that I’d had a lover who’d deserted me and I wanted him found, and in return I promised him a big story.”

  “Me?”

  “No! Of course not. But James . . . If he’s a new ‘Witness’ of some kind, the story’s going to break anyway, and it might as well be Carl Lewis as anybody else. At least this way I get something out of the whole lousy deal besides more people shooting at me.”

  This cynicism about the Atoners was new to her. Doubt, yes—she’d had doubt before. But Lucca looked at the downturn of Soledad’s mouth and the expression in her eyes, and recognized a depth of suffering she would never admit.

  He said gently, “Are you really sure you want to see James again?”

  “Yes.” The stoniness was back. “Lucca. What do you think the Atoners are doing?”

  “I have no clue.” The stove began to warm the cabin.

  “Then what are we doing? This cabin is so isolated. . . . You got me away from the Agency, but there’s not even a phone, no way to do . . . anything.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” He opened the suitcase. With a flourish he took out two pairs of his pajamas, six shirts, socks and underwear and toiletries, and laid them elaborately at Soledad’s feet like a knight presenting tribute to a queen.

  She didn’t smile. Staring into the bottom of the suitcase, she said, “You have a gun.”

  “I do, yes.”

  “What are those electronics?”

  “Handhelds. The beam upward is traceable, but nobody’s going to be looking for it here. The calls themselves and the results of the surveillance equipment are completely untraceable, Russian black-market stuff that runs military-grade encrypted software piggybacking on E.U. satellites.”

  She turned slowly. “What did you say?”

  “I said this is Russian black-market stuff that runs military-grade encrypted software piggybacking on E.U. satellites to—”

  “You fucker.”

  It was said so quietly, so low, that at first Lucca thought he’d misheard. Then he understood. Americans . . . they were always so open with each other. But he had expected intelligence agents to be different.

  “It was you,” Soledad said in that same deadly quiet voice. “You put the Everknow surveillance stuff in the woods around my house.”

  “Yes. I did.”

  “I trusted you.” And after a pause, “Just like I trusted James.”

  “No. Not like you trusted James, and with a big difference—” He took a step toward her but stopped when she retreated. “Listen to me. I had you under surveillance because I was concerned about your safety. I didn’t tell you, no, because I did not want you telling Diane Lovett or James or anybody else. Who could know that you, of all urban creatures, would take a walk in the woods?” He almost smiled but caught himself; a smile right now would be fatal. “I am not James. I did not watch you or get close to you in order to use you. I was concerned about a friend is all, and . . . Soledad, please do not be angry with me. My reasons were of the best, only. Please believe me.”

  A part of his mind was astonished at how much it mattered that she did believe him.

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore. Not about you, not about James, not about the Atoners—” She put her hands over her face.

  Lucca tried to take her in his arms, but she pushed him away. “Cara—”

  “Don’t call me that. Just . . . just let me think.”

  He did. He busied himself with adjusting the lantern, with putting the tiny supply of clothes on a wooden shelf, with opening a large plastic box to survey the dried food inside. Five minutes passed, maybe ten. When she finally spoke, he spun around so quickly that he almost lost his balance. Soledad had removed her jacket in the new warmth of the cabin. Underneath she wore a man’s sweater, blue cashmere, with a stain near the neck band.

  “All right, I believe you. I’ve never known you to lie to me, and you admitted it when I asked. But don’t withhold any more information, okay? You have to promise me. If you won’t, I’m calling Diane on one of those handhelds and going back to New York.”

  “I promise to not withhold any more information from you.” She had revealed more than she intended. If Diane and this Carl Lewis were her only other resources, she was needy indeed.

  “Fine,” Soledad said tonelessly. “You’re a hundred percent sure these handhelds can’t be traced?”

  “I am.”

  “Then give me one to call Carl and give him the number. And after that, I want you to teach me how to shoot that gun
.”

  He hadn’t expected that, and a sudden qualm took him. He thought he knew her, but— Sometimes jealous women— “Soledad . . . cara . . . you’re thinking of shooting James?”

  “Of course not.” She looked directly into Lucca’s eyes. “But I’ll shoot anybody who tries to keep me from finding out what James and the Atoners are trying to do now.”

  “Ah,” he said, unimpressed. Apparently even a woman like Soledad was capable of histrionics—quiet histrionics, yes—when jilted in love, but he didn’t believe for a moment that she would carry through any melodramatic acts of revenge. What she needed now was to untighten, to relax a bit. Lucca pulled from off a shelf a bottle of wine, inspected it, and grimaced. It would have to do, but a California merlot—amazing. Americans, even rich Americans like Anna Parker, would apparently drink anything.

  61: FROM THE

  DIBELLA ROSE CATALOG (2021)

  NEW!!!

  “Atoner Crimson”

  Vivid blossoms lasting so long into the season you’ll almost believe they never die!

  High-centered, classic blooms in brightest red make “Atoner Crimson” a very attractive addition to any garden. A compact bushy plant that will fit perfectly into today’s smaller gardens. Z 6-10, repeat bloom, 50 petals.

  Height: 3′ X 2 1/2′

  Fragrance: Moderately Fragrant

  Year: 2021

  Country: France

  Item #: N487

  Price: $20.95 per rosebush

  62: CAM

  CAM HATED LUNA STATION.

  She had hated the shuttle trip up, too, although not because of the weightlessness or anything bodily like that. No, she hadn’t realized how spoiled she’d become, how used to large open rooms and—despite her entourage and Angie Bernelli—to privacy when she wanted it. On the shuttle, there was no place to move. Cam, an active person by nature, seemed to feel her muscles crumple and thin. Eight people were crammed into the space of a minibus for three days, listening to each other snore and talk and fart. No escape except in the tiny bathroom that smelled even worse than the rest of the shuttle as the days crawled on.

  Not that the other passengers were offensive people. Nice enough, they were nonetheless middle-aged people who had nothing in common with her. They talked about things she didn’t understand, “quantum evolution” and “the imperative to go stellar” and “the Higgs ocean.” Atlantic, Pacific, Indian—Cam didn’t remember any Higgs Ocean. These people, except Frank, were all a lot smarter and more educated than she was, and Frank, who might have helped her, went the entire three days without saying anything at all. How could a person even do that? Cam couldn’t wait to land on the moon.

  Which was even worse.

  Farrington Tours’ Luna Station consisted of six trailers on stilts plus a few towering metal silos described as “air and power plants.” That was it. The trailers were connected by narrow inflated plastic tunnels, so that nobody had to go outside. The lander that came down from the shuttle, carrying four people each time, turned into a rover on the surface. It drove into a tiny inflated “garage” with an air lock at one end and a door to the largest trailer at the other. Two of the trailers housed tourists, two held Farrington people, one stored supplies, and one, bigger than the others, was a kind of living/dining room/lecture hall. All of them were crammed with things Cam couldn’t name.

  “I’m so grateful I’ve lived to see this,” said Jane Kingwell, in what for her passed for an excited voice. Jane, Cam’s roommate in the teeny space allotted them in Module #2, was fifty-five and motherly. Cam didn’t need a mother; she needed to grab Frank’s hair packet and go home. “This is much nicer than the pictures we saw of the station.”

  Had they seen pictures? No, Cam had not—she’d been posing for the four million publicity photographs that were the price of getting her and Frank up here. For all of them, she’d had to look smiling and thrilled. The only time she could be sure of a robocam not snapping away was when she was asleep—but then came the dreams of Kular and Aveo.

  “Cam, are you all right?” Jane asked. “You look pale.”

  Pale, my ass. She looked like shit and smelled worse. Didn’t Jane ever say what she really meant?

  “I’m fine, thanks. What’s supposed to happen now?”

  “A lecture in the Clarke Module about Shackleton Crater.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re in it,” Jane said gently. “Remember? Both Luna Station and Selene City are here because it has sunlight seventy percent of the time and the deep shadows make ice—”

  “Oh, yeah, now I remember,” said Cam, who didn’t. More lectures, more photos. “The Atoner base is near here, too, then.”

  “Yes. Fifty miles away.” Jane got the look she always got when anything connected with the Atoners came up in conversation around Cam or Frank: Tell me more, please please please, but I’m too polite to ask directly.

  “Then let’s get over to Clarke,” Cam said.

  AVEO STOOD BARE CHESTED in his brown skirt, flesh drooping in gobbets from his bones and the bones gleaming like knives. He smiled at her with blackened lips over rotted teeth, a smile like Satan himself. He held something out to her, and rasped, “You must play kulith better than that, ostiu, or else . . .”

  “Cam! Cam dear, wake up, you’re dreaming!”

  She clawed up from sleep, gasping, tears on her cheeks, and looked wildly around. Where was Aveo? Where was she? Luna Station . . .

  “You had a nightmare,” Jane said, one kindly hand on Cam’s shoulder. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No!”

  The hand withdrew. “I didn’t mean to pry, truly. I’m just concerned. You seem to be under so much stress. . . .”

  You don’t know a tenth of it, lady. “No, I’m— It’s okay.” Jane had read about Cam’s “breakdown,” of course—the entire world had read about that hotel clerk’s lies. Or were they lies? Cam couldn’t tell anymore. “I’m fine. I’m going back to sleep. See, this is me, fast asleep.”

  If only.

  THE NEXT DAY Cam’s subgroup left in the rover for their sightseeing trip to Selene City and the Atoner base. The rover held four: Cam and Frank, who had insisted on going together, Jane, and the Farrington Tours escort-plus-rover-driver, Terry Siekert. Slight and pale, Terry was finishing his 180-day shift at Luna Station and apparently none the worse for it. Cam saw Frank studying Terry intently. She knew why, and her stomach tightened.

  She almost cried out with relief when she saw Selene City. It had a big dome! People walked around inside it! True, the whole thing was no more than the size of half a football field and much of it was taken up with more of the trailer-modules, but after the shuttle and the station this seemed as spacious as Uldunu’s palace on Kular.

  The rover drove in and out of an air lock, and Cam bolted from the rover into the dome. Frank gave her an odd look. Cam laughed wildly. Her feet were finally again on ground— Well, no, it was some kind of hard plastic floor, but it would do. She could adapt. She had adapted on Kular, hadn’t she? She could do this.

  Frank said, “Calm down, Cam. Don’t have another meltdown.”

  “Fuck you, Olenik,” she said, almost amiably, and followed Terry Siekert inside a trailer for dinner with the scientists of Selene City. However, once they were seated at a long table with three men and two women, things again turned sour.

  It was obvious that the moon tourists were barely tolerated here. The governments that funded Selene might welcome Farrington’s hefty donations, but the scientists living and working on the moon considered the visitors to be overprivileged and intrusive nuisances. Their mood worsened when Terry posed Cam again and again with each scientist, had her make inquiries she didn’t understand about each piece of equipment, videoed and photographed and holoed her from every possible angle.

  “I think that’s enough pictures,” said Dr. Alyssa Frantz, senior something-or-other. She was about Jane’s age but cold-looking and snotty. Cam had disliked her
immediately, and one or two remarks she’d made since only deepened that dislike. “Surely by now you have enough pixels showcasing the glory of Camilla O’Kane back on the moon.”

  “Allie,” a bald man said warningly.

  “No, go ahead,” Cam said. All at once her fidgety, half-hysterical nerves hardened and focused. She could feel it happening. This woman with a stick up her ass was everything Cam hated, everything that had kept her down back in Nebraska, everything that had driven her to volunteer to become a Witness in the first place. “What about the glory of Camilla O’Kane back on the moon?”

  “I think I’ve said all I want to say on that topic,” Dr. Frantz said, but her gaze flickered over Cam. I know you, that gaze said, and you’re nothing.

  And I know you. “You imagine that I’m here for glory and publicity for myself,” Cam said, “while you’re here for serious science work.”

  “I really don’t want to discuss this, Ms. O’Kane. Can we please eat our dinners in peace?”

  “No. We can’t. Tell me, Dr. Frantz, what strikes you as more ‘serious work’ than spreading the truth about humanity having an afterlife? With all the hope and comfort that gives people?”

  “Allie . . . ,” repeated the bald man, but not as if he expected to be listened to.

  “Nothing would be more important if it were true, instead of a pack of wish-fulfillment lies. Tell me, Ms. O’Kane, are you familiar with the recent work by Gilbert and Schumaker at Harvard and by Murakami at RIKEN? No? I didn’t think so. They’ve had some rather astonishing breakthroughs concerning the electrical field that surrounds the human head from brain activity, including how that field might potentially carry information via electromagnetic fluctuations.”

  Cam struggled to follow this. The bald man said to her, “What Alyssa means—”

  “I’m not stupid,” Cam snapped, and now the entire table had fallen silent, listening. “I know ‘what Alyssa means.’ She’s talking about Lucca’s idea that what happened on Kular was telepathy, not seeing the dead.”