Steal Across the Sky (37 page)

[long silence]

PRESIDENT:
Did they—

WS:
I don’t know!

[long silence]

PRESIDENT:
[barely audible] Tell Colonel Shoniker I said to go ahead with his recommendations.

WS:
Judith—

PRESIDENT:
Do it. Now.

FRANK THOUGHT RAPIDLY
about the order of what should come next. Order was critically important. If he removed the yellow packet from his EVA suit before he untied Jane and Terry, Terry might see it or spy-eyes Frank didn’t know about might see. If he untied Terry first, he might have to scuffle with him. Frank couldn’t drive the rover. The miniscule john had no room to remove a space suit. Terry watched him with eyes more full of anger and bitterness than Frank would have thought possible, although at least the man had shut up.

Frank began peeling off his suit. Cam’s was already down around her knees. She looked too happy, damn her. The woman just didn’t have a poker face. But the next moment he realized that he’d underestimated her: She was creating a distraction.

“We saw an Atoner!”

Both Terry’s and Jane’s gazes jerked toward her as if yanked on a rope.

“The Dome opened and it just walked out! Little, squishy-looking, a tiny bit green, it had these wiggly worms for hair, sort of, it waddled like a duck because its legs were so fat. . . .” She babbled on. Jane clearly didn’t believe her. Frank couldn’t read Terry’s expression, but it didn’t matter. Frank had the hair—the real hairs, the ones from the child on Susban, with the real genes—out of the EVA suit and clutched in his hand. The filmy yellow material with its precious burden compressed to almost nothing. That was why he’d chosen that cloth.

He said, “I’ll untie you as soon as I use the can,” went into the bathroom, and put the hair into the special pocket he’d sewn into the inside of his boxers. Even if he was forced to strip, the pocket wasn’t noticeable unless you were looking for it, and no one would be.

When he came out, Cam had freed Jane and started on Terry. Terry stood and put his boots back on. He said nothing as he sat in the front seat and started the engine. But, of course, Cam felt compelled to talk.

“We’re sorry, Terry. But please try to understand. So much happened to both of us out there, it changed us so much, and we just wanted to ask the Atoners why. But the Atoner that came out from the Dome wouldn’t say anything. He—it—just stood there, looked at us, and went back in. Still, we had to do it, everything that happened out there just keeps eating away at us until we could barely even function. . . . You have to understand!”

“No. I don’t,” Terry said tonelessly while Frank shot Cam a look of dislike. He’d been in no danger of not functioning.

Jane said, “I think you need professional help, both of you. I know a good psychiatrist in New York who—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Jane,” Cam said.

The trip back to Luna Station passed in total silence, three hours of it, even Cam. Frank was grateful. He stared out the window at the arid moonscape and rehearsed the next steps. Could Farrington bring some sort of lawsuit against him and Cam? Maybe. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was to get the hair to a biotech company, an ethical one with no government ties, that would agree to clone the genes and help restore them to humanity. Maybe a fertility clinic would be best, so people could choose to have them implanted in embryos—could they do that yet? Frank wasn’t sure. But if they couldn’t, then the hair could be saved until the technology caught up.

Maybe he should rent a safe-deposit box. Yes, that would be best. He hoped it didn’t cost too much. And a lawyer—did he need a lawyer? He didn’t really trust lawyers—every cop knew how lawyers could screw with legitimate charges against some scumbag and get him clean off. But the safe-deposit box, definitely—

“We’re here,” Terry said. The rover drove into the clear plastic “garage” and it pressurized. The four of them got out, still in silence. The door to the Clarke Module opened. Terry and Jane went first and then, before Frank and Cam could pass through, the door was slammed shut.

Cam cried, “They’re going to kill us! They’re going to depressurize—”

“No.” Frank willed himself to calm. “No, they won’t do that.”

They didn’t. But as his legs buckled and his head grew light, Frank knew what they had done. A knockout gas, an emergency contingency tool because tourists after all were selected only for their money and who was to say some of them might not be genuinely crazy. . . .
Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and in the hour of our death
. . . .

He went down.

WHEN HE CAME TO
, he lay strapped in the Farrington shuttle. Cam lay unconscious in the seat next to him. No other tourists occupied the space-bus shuttle, but Terry sat at the controls and three other people, a crowd in the tiny space, stood gazing down at him. No weightlessness—they were either on the moon still or else on Earth. Frank craned his neck to see a window. Earth filled the sky, a glowing blue-and-white ball. So— still on the moon.

“Can you see clearly?” a woman asked. She began resting boxes against his body and studying their small readout screens. A doctor.

“Yes.”

“Trouble breathing?”

“No.” Dread began its slow climb along his spinal column. It didn’t matter what they did with him, but please don’t let them already have the packet. . . . He wore his own clothes, a good sign.
Hail Mary, Mother of God
. . .

The doctor finished and a small man took her place. Frank hadn’t seen him at Farrington Tours. He must have come out from Selene City, that was the only other possibility—how long had Frank been unconscious?

The small man studied Frank intently. He had a completely bald head like a peeled egg and very deep, almost black, brown eyes. He held up the yellow packet of hair. “Tell us about this, Frank.”

Frank closed his eyes.

Terry, apparently unable to contain himself any longer, burst out, “Didn’t you know that transmitters on your EVA suit operate continually to Luna Station even if you cut off rover-to-suit communication? No, you didn’t, you thought you’d get away with—”

“That’s enough, Terry,” the bald man said, with unmistakable authority.

Enough. Too much. Game over. But Terry was right: Frank hadn’t
known about the continual transmission. That fact about the EVA suits hadn’t shown up in his online research, probably by design. Caught in pixels, all of it: the Atoner, the hair, his switch. He’d fooled the Atoner but not his own kind. He just hadn’t known.

Publisher: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

ISSN: 13560123

OCLC: 60577118

LCCN: 2005-236986

ROADS, LADDERS, AND MOUNTAINS: AN OVERVIEW OF AFTERLIFE MYTHS AMONG AMAZONIAN TRIBES AS COMPARED TO PRELIMINARY REPORTS FROM KULAR, SUSBAN, ET AL.

by Susan L. Jemison, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, and E. M. Kubasak, Chair, Department of Anthropology, Eastern New Mexico University

Abstract

Although described by “Witnesses” untrained in anthropology, the alleged afterlife myths reported by Andrew DuBois, Sara Dziwalski, Christina Harden, John E. Jones, Lucca Maduro, and Francis Olenik should be of interest to scholars concerned with the formation, propagation, and maintenance of cultural beliefs concerning the existence of life after death. Of particular interest are various close parallels between these “extra-solar” beliefs and myths found among three indigenous Amazonian peoples. These parallels are examined in terms of death rites, prayer, tribal religious leadership, and socialization of the young.

SOLEDAD STOOD BY LUCCA’S
bedside in a facility—it wasn’t exactly a hospital—that she hadn’t known existed. Nor did she know where it was, except that from the window she could see a rocky shore and what looked like a very cold ocean. Whatever it was, it included an OR, to which Lucca had been rushed at the same time that an entire medical team arrived by another helicopter. He now lay unconscious in this small sunny room with a bulky dressing on his leg, antibiotics dripping into his arm, and guards at his door.

“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
.