Steal Across the Sky (27 page)

“Frank!” Upstairs, Cam hugged him like it had been him and not Lucca who’d had the bad judgment to do her. Frank untangled himself and looked around.

The hotel suite reminded him of Lucca’s place in Toronto. Big, rich looking, but not homey. Except that Lucca’s place somehow looked like him and nothing here looked like Cam, not even the colors. Quiet grays and blues. The room was full of people watching him sideways. A huge screen shot news into the room like arrows, and several handhelds played avatars or newscasts, making a low constant undertone like surf breaking. He said, “Where can we talk privately?”

“Follow me.” She flounced into a bedroom and closed the door behind them. Frank didn’t like the intimacy of that, made worse by Cam’s low-cut top—she had great breasts, he’d give her that—but it would have to do.

“You make sure this place isn’t bugged?”

Her eyes got wider. “Who would bug me?”

He sighed, led her into the bathroom, and turned on the shower and water taps. About as primitive as you could get, but the government and the big corporations had stuff that could override any jammer Frank could obtain. He pulled Cam close to him, put his mouth to her ear, and was surprised when she pulled away, flushing.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that someone else . . . We spoke like that on Kular. . . . I . . . I’m sorry.” The hysterical note was back in her voice.

He put on the respectful, calming-down voice and body language he’d learned at the Academy. “I understand. I’m just going to move closer again. . . . Is that okay? I won’t touch you.”

She nodded, grimacing like she knew how ridiculous she looked. Again Frank put his mouth to her ear.

“I have to tell you something big. Try not to react, Cam, and
don’t say anything out loud
. Nothing at all. I need your help. Sara died and Soledad’s friend was shot because neither the Atoners nor the government care about what’s really right. The government screwed Sara by not protecting her and they screwed me out of my career because the whole system is corrupt. The Atoners screwed you by just sitting up there on the moon and not doing anything to atone or to help your lectures. So
we
have to help ourselves to get back what God wanted us to have in the first place. Nobody else is helping us. You with me so far?”

She nodded slightly. Frank had rehearsed this speech during the long drive to New York, drinking Energodas and forcing himself to not clutch the steering wheel. Now he readied himself to either grab her closer or put a hand over her mouth if she blurted anything. A carefully gentle hand.

“On Susban A I took a packet of hair with DNA in the follicles. I hid it on the moon—no, Cam, steady now—before we all went to decon. It’s still there. I need money to go up there on Farrington Tours, get it back, and give it to some biotech company that can get back into human beings the genes God wanted us to have. You can pay for that trip.”

She took a step backward, looking dazed, and he put a finger to his lips. For a long moment he wasn’t sure of her—her face was a perfect blank. An undercurrent of petty satisfaction rippled through him: He’d made Cam O’Kane shut up.

Then she said, “Yes! Oh, yes!” looking like Christmas morning. She grabbed him and kissed him full on the lips. Frank’s cock rose of its own accord. But that didn’t mean anything, it never did. He pushed her away gently, not wanting to offend her, but she didn’t seem to mind. She whirled away from him like those spinning tops he’d had as a kid, and he steeled himself to stand his new, completely unreliable, rich silent partner.

ONLY SHE DIDN’T PLAN
on staying silent. That was the first shock.

“I’m going, too,” she whispered into his ear in the dark. Cam had insisted on his staying at her hotel, and since the alternative was Mike
Renfrew’s van or some cheap hotel he didn’t know how to find in Manhattan, Frank had agreed. She’d sent down to room service for a steak dinner, which he’d wolfed down. Cam introduced Frank to everybody cluttering up her suite and he’d kept his face empty as he memorized them. A “lecture manager,” a secretary, a federal agent, a woman described as “personal staff,” two lawyers, and the bodyguard. Everybody had left halfway through the evening, although Frank would bet his Glock that the bodyguard and the agent weren’t far away, nor unconnected electronically.

He went to sleep in a small second bedroom off hers, removing only his jeans and shoes. Rare for him, he had dreamed about Susban A. The high rose-and-cream towers pierced the purple-blue sky, the women in filmy pants walked the wide streets, and every square held its elaborate dead house where spirits that had not yet passed through the last door gathered to talk to each other and to the friends and relatives who visited daily. In his dream, Frank could see the dead as well as the natives could, still laughing and scheming and advising on the elaborate political plots that controlled the city. Sara, decently dressed, walked toward him, smiling and holding out hands full of the huge, fragrant blossoms that grew everywhere, and—

“Frank!”

—she said in her sweet and feminine voice—

“Frank!” Cam stood by his bed, silhouetted in the light from the open doorway. “I have to talk to you!”

Damn her
. “Okay. Your bathroom. Give me a minute.”

She left, closing the door behind her, which let him pull on his pants in privacy. He took his gun from under his pillow, followed her to the bathroom, and turned on all the water. Cam wore a red silk bathrobe with dragons on it, gaudy but fairly modest. She put her mouth to his ear.

“I was so surprised by what you said earlier that I can’t remember if I said that of course I’m going with you.”

“No. You’re not. You can’t.”

“What do you mean?” A new note in her voice, a Cam he hadn’t met before. But he had prepared.

“It’s two million dollars a pop. How could you afford to pay for both of us? The—”

“Do you really think I could have paid for even one of us?” she said dryly.

That stopped him for a minute. “This hotel . . . all that ‘staff’—”

“Takes everything I make. I don’t have two million dollars, let alone four, but I can arrange it.”

“How—”

“I got it covered.” She pulled away and stared at him, surrounded by running water.

Frank had a sudden, stomach-dropping feeling that he’d miscalculated somewhere. The last thing he wanted was Cam O’Kane with him on the moon. He needed to think of a way to ease her out of going, a way that wouldn’t make her shut down the whole project. To stall, he said, “We’ll talk about it in the morning. But either way, you
did
promise to fund me going. For humanity, and for God.”

She jerked away from him then, her eyes colder than he would have imagined her capable of. She spoke at her normal volume. “I don’t believe in God, Frank, and I never said I did. If you’d seen what I have, you wouldn’t believe in Him, either. That’s not what you and I agreed on.”

As long as she did agree. He nodded, keeping his face calm, and abruptly she left the bathroom.

He had to pass through her bedroom to get back to his own. She already lay on her bed, still in the red silk robe, her face turned to the wall. But something in the stillness of the lush figure gave Frank pause. He had the unpleasant feeling that this issue of who was going to Luna Station wasn’t any longer in his control.

If it ever had been in the first place.

SUMMARY

Methodology

Five focus groups were held, each with twelve randomly chosen participants in their fifties, sixties, and seventies. Subjects were shown a six-minute video. The first three minutes consisted of public statements of The Six concerning the afterlife, paired with computer-generated images of “the second road,” “the golden ladder,” “the last door,” etc. The second three minutes consisted of a simple narrative paired with computer-generated images of a newly dead “soul” standing in a hospice, listening to loved ones’ comments, and witnessing burial. Every effort was made to keep all of these positive, i.e., “I know he’s in a better place now,” “She’s still right here beside me even if I can’t see her,” “I know we’ll all be together again someday.” After the video, participants were shown pictures of four different memorial-park arrangements:

• Traditional grave and headstone
  
• Traditional mausoleum
  
• “Transition Patio,” a 6′×8′ enclosure within a picket fence and including the grave, two stone benches for “your loved one’s ease— and yours as you sit beside her presence while she prepares for the journey onward”
  
• “Transition House,” a 10′×12′ roofed and heated structure with two chairs and a comfortable bunk “to visit in privacy with
  your loved one as she prepares for the next stage of the final journey”
  

Findings

42% of participants said that they would “strongly consider” the Transition Patio as a memorial-park option, if it were available. 6% chose the Transition House, 5% the traditional mausoleum, and 47% the traditional plot and headstone (see attached chart for breakdown by age, sex, and economic self-rating).

 

Recommendations

There is a significant marketing opportunity here for Carruthers to develop Transitional Patio offerings. See attached list of specific recommendations and marketing strategies.

SOLEDAD LAY BESIDE THE SLEEPING JAMES.
Her bedroom in the little Catskills house was still dark, but she’d put in a low-wattage night-light just so she could have the pleasure of seeing him every time she woke in the night. Now he lay on his side, curled toward her, his bare chest rising slightly with every soft breath. His hair fell onto his forehead. His long eyelashes fluttered in REM sleep. One hand lay over Soledad’s arm.

Surely it must be wrong to be this happy.

Sara Dziwalski was dead, Fengmo lay still unconscious in the hospital, the Atoners maintained their perverse silence on the moon. But the CCAD had committed no atrocities for the last month, not since the night of Cam’s performance. The Why Wait? Society seemed quiescent. And here, last night and many other nights, lay James.

Soledad slipped her arm from under James’s hand and turned to see the glowing clock. Five
A.M
. Carefully she eased off the bed and groped her way to the kitchen. She was incurably awake, but James could sleep another half hour. He had to catch the 6:17 maglev in order to be at work in Manhattan at 8:30. He made this commute many nights, and at the end of April would make it all nights when he moved in with Soledad.

His bare Manhattan apartment, a furnished sublet, had been bare because James had just arrived from California a month ago, to take the job as a substance-abuse counselor with the New York City Health Department. His own furniture and most of his belongings were still in storage in California. The expensive blue cashmere sweater had been a gift from his mother, who “had great taste.” Soledad had almost allowed her suspicious nature to deny her this present, unexpected, almost unbelievable happiness.

She put on the coffee and turned on a newscast, very low. When she was sure that nothing too horrible had happened overnight, she changed the screen to
obituaries.com
and keyed in “Manhattan.” Sipping her coffee, she read each one slowly, keeping one eye toward the bedroom. This new habit wasn’t something she was ready to share with James.

Alcozer, Jane Elizabeth, Staten Island, March 24, 2021. Survived by her son, Daniel (Jennifer) Alcozer; daughter Cynthia (Eric) Carmel; daughter Mary Alcozer; 7 grandchildren; 2 great-grandchildren; brother, Donald Hogel. Memorial service Saturday, March 27, 1:00, at Newbury Funeral Home, 274 West End Avenue. Friends may contribute to the Alzheimer’s Association.

 

Amanti, Angela, March 25, 2021, age 9. Friends are invited to a Mass of Christian Burial, 9:30
A.M
., Friday, March 26, Blessed Sacrament Church, 152 W. 71st Street.

Jane Elizabeth Alcozer, an old lady with a long life and large family, and little Angela Amanti, prematurely dead of some terrible disease, accident, or act of violence.
Are you standing together on the second road? Or are you merely rotting corpses, awaiting cremation or burial
?

“What are you doing?” James said behind her, and she jumped.

“Nothing!”

“Really?” He studied the screen. “Soledad, sweetheart . . .”

“I wish I knew. One way or the other. James, it
matters
.”

“Of course it does.” He pulled her from the chair and took her in his arms. She breathed in his frowzy early-morning smell and felt her heart speed up. “Nothing could matter more.”

“You understand.”

“I do. Of course I do. But you won’t find any answers in the obituaries.”

“I know. But they could be here . . . right beside us . . . this very minute. Maybe.”

“Well, if they are, they don’t need coffee as much as I do.” He let her go and Soledad felt the small, stupid, dangerous desolation she always did when he moved away from her, even if it was just across the room.
Be
careful, be cautious, don’t care too much
, went all the alarms in her head, all her past experience, but she couldn’t help it.

“Lucca said something to me once. He said that once a person had had an experience, it was impossible for inner life to go forward as if it hadn’t occurred. That everything that happens marks us.”

“Not especially profound,” James said. He often got an odd tone when she mentioned Lucca. Why was that? Maybe—this scarcely seemed possible, not over her—James was slightly jealous?

“When will you be home for dinner?”

“Oh, not tonight— Didn’t I tell you? I’m sorry. There’s a work thing I have to go to, and it’ll be easier to stay at the apartment. I can box up the last of my things to ship here, too.” He drank off half his coffee at one draught.