Steal Across the Sky

  Aveo followed none of this. Also, something was happening in his head, a sudden darkening. One foot began to tremble slightly.

  She was still talking. Her words blurred, came back too sharply to his ears, blurred again. And then all at once there were two voices, both female, and Cam was gazing at the window on the wall where a moment ago there had been an empty field and now all at once there was a woman’s head, just the head, a monstrous thing large enough to fill the window, and the head was moving as it talked. “—and then Lucca—”

  “—did he—”

  “—an old lady, dead—”

  They weren’t words in Pularit, or Memenatit, or Uldunuit. Nonsense words, such as mothers crooned to infants in arms. And Cam’s eyes were wide as a child’s, as if the moving picture of the woman had— How could a picture move, but of course it was a window, still a woman’s head that large . . . and such a head, with short curls the dull red of guem flowers how long since—

  “Aveo!”

  Cam knelt over him then, while the monstrous head craned to see through the window and looked both puzzled and concerned. A sharp sting . . . oh, please not more poisoned thrul vines . . . but it wasn’t. A sharp, very thin sword slid into him, in Cam’s hand, and again the darkness receded from his mind and her words created sense.

  “That was all I’ve got, the last-ditch effort,” she said, but where were the ditches? This flying ship held no ditches.

  “Aveo, I think . . . I think you’re dying.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.” Darkness soon. Pushed away for a short time, maybe, but soon.

  “No!” she cried, and he had to smile. Perhaps the smile came from some potion smeared on her small sword, but perhaps not. The young were laughable. They could never see that death might be welcome.

  He summoned up the strength to murmur, “Go home, Ostiu Cam,” but he didn’t have breath for the rest of what he wanted to say: Go home to that place where there are wars but you have not fought them, slavery but you have not seen it, poisonous plants but not mating in the gardens of a goddess. Go home and—

  “Soledad!” Cam was screaming at the wall. “Take the shuttle to Kular A!”

  “To Kular A?”

  “Yes! If Lucca really saw—” There was a lot more, but Aveo didn’t hear it. The room went dark. He felt the ship lift, and then he felt Cam’s arms picking him up off the floor and holding him, and then he felt nothing at all.

  25: LUCCA

  LUCCA WOKE just as the first light of dawn, thin and sickly, filtered through the hut’s tiny window. His commlink vibrated urgently against his skin.

  Soledad knew that he’d kept his tech hidden from the Kularians; she would call him only if it was very urgent. Close to him—too close, their reek filled his nostrils and their snoring his nose—Hytrowembireliaz’s family slept. Lucca fumbled for the commlink, opened the link, and breathed softly, “Yes?” The rest of them might sleep as if drugged by winter itself, but Chewithoztarel woke easily. As Lucca’s eyes adjusted, he kept them on her corner of the hut.

  “Something’s happening,” Soledad said, loud in his ears. “Go outside and dress as warmly as you can.”

  “What—”

  “Go!”

  Still watching Chewithoztarel, Lucca eased himself soundlessly from his pungent pile of rugs and blankets. Something’s happening, she had said, not Something happened. The ship? The Atoners? Cam? Dread coupled with excitement sent spasms racing along his spine.

  The cold was a palpable thing, slicing at him like knives. There was no need to “dress warmly”—he already wore everything he’d been given. Lucca wrapped an extra blanket around himself and crept to the door. Chewithoztarel, miracle of miracles, did not wake.

  Outside it was even colder. Shivering, Lucca said, “Soledad?”

  “Cam’s on her way in the shuttle to Kular A, and she’s bringing a native.”

  “What?”

  “She insisted.” Soledad sounded angry, apprehensive, and fascinated, all at once. “You know that the Atoners said that you two are the mission decision makers on your respective planets. I’m just the coordinator.”

  “But this isn’t her planet! It’s mine!” A second later, Lucca heard how that sounded. He strove, teeth chattering, for a more adult tone. “Why is she coming? Why are they coming?”

  “The native is dying, apparently. I told Cam about your discoveries of telepathy in death, and Cam wants . . . I don’t understand what she wants, exactly. Maybe she doesn’t understand, either—you know Cam. But they’re landing three miles from your village in an hour and twenty-three minutes, and you should be there. I’m going to voice-guide you to the spot. It should be well out of sight of—”

  “You told her what about my ‘discoveries of telepathy in death’?” This was incredible, was unbelievable even for Cam. How the Atoners had ever picked that rabbit-brained girl . . .

  “I told her just what you told me,” Soledad said stiffly. “As per my instructions from the Atoners.”

  “And so now she’s bringing some dying Kularian to— What? Have his ‘ghost’ spoken to by a mendacious child?”

  “You’ll have to ask Cam that.” Soledad’s voice sounded weary.

  “Who is this dying person? Another of her lovers?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that they’re coming. They’ll be there in an hour and twenty-one minutes.”

  “This is just stupid. And I’ve been getting these . . . disabilities every day at mid-morning—what if today I suddenly can’t walk, or hear, or tell if I’ve broken my arm and I’m way the hell out away from the village, alone?”

  “You’ll have Cam by then.”

  “Oh, certo, she’s always such a big help. We’ll be stuck there with a dying Kularian, who— What are we supposed to do with him when Cam arrives? Get him to my village?”

  “Or bring a villager to him.”

  “It’s stupid, Soledad. Stupid and dangerous. How many strangers in shuttles falling out of the sky do you think this village can absorb before the villagers get disturbed and maybe violent?”

  “From what you’ve told me, any number.”

  She was right, of course. Nothing disturbed the village. But, then, they didn’t have to deal with anyone as disturbing as Cam O’Kane. As disturbing, as idiotic, as incapable of rational thought . . . E che cazzo.

  Soledad said, “Start walking, Lucca. Directly into the sunrise. I’ll guide you from there.”

  It had stopped snowing overnight, and as the sun rose, the snow began to glitter, a pristine carpet of white diamonds. He tried to commlink Cam, but there was no answer from the shuttle. Cursing and shivering, Lucca trudged east.

  THE ATONER SHUTTLE CAME DOWN NOISILY but not hard. Lucca had never seen their landings from the outside. So this was what the natives of Kular B had experienced when Cam’s shuttle landed. His own, of course, had hurtled down unseen, crippled and now rusting quietly somewhere in the vast snows.

  He’d been waiting for perhaps half an hour, stamping his feet and waving his arms and walking in circles to keep warm. He was hungry and thirsty, but his fury had died down, or perhaps been frozen out. Immediately the door opened and Cam stood there, gesturing wildly. “Lucca! Come quick!”

  He walked from the barren steppe back into the alien future. The shuttle was warm inside, so warm that immediately Lucca began to strip off his blanket and some clothing. Strapped into one of the shuttle’s two seats was an old man with a bare, sunken chest and a skirt of some rough brown material. Even lying down he looked much taller than the small brown people of Lucca’s village, and his coloring was different: light brown hair gone mostly gray, open and staring navy blue eyes flecked with silver.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Almost!” Cam cried. “I gave him the patches and the needle and everything the Atoners gave us, but he was poisoned by some alien plants and I don’t think the ’Tonies knew how to . . . Lucca, I think he’s going to die!”

  “And so why did
you bring him here? Leaving your mission?”

  At his tone, her face changed. Fear and panic shifted into a cold anger, and that was a surprise. Before, Cam had never done anything coldly. Heat was her hallmark.

  “I didn’t leave my mission. It was over because there’s nothing to witness on Kular B. You—”

  “You don’t know that. You didn’t see the whole planet.”

  “I saw enough.” To his further surprise, she shuddered, deeply, sudden pain in her eyes. “You have no idea what I saw. But right now we’re talking about what you saw. I brought Aveo here because he is going to die and I want him to die in your village, with your villagers, so that he’s part of whatever is happening here. Soledad told me that your people think they can see the dead! What if it’s true, what if they really can, and after Aveo goes they can tell him— But even if it’s not true, we’ll see them do something and Aveo will be a part of it and we’ll have actually witnessed something, at least!”

  “You mean,” Lucca said coldly, “you’ll have witnessed something at least. I already did. This is about you, isn’t it, Cam? About you needing to be part of this telepathy phenomenon that—”

  “Fuck you, Lucca! This is about Aveo! About his life actually meaning something, he lost everything on Kular, everything, you have no fucking idea—”

  “And so you bring him here so that my villagers can have their telepathy activated and you can delude yourself that he’s not really dead. It’s still about you.”

  “It’s about Aveo! You don’t know for sure what’s going on here! There are strange things in the universe!” She turned away, but not before Lucca saw her tears.

  The same old sentimental bullshit. Temple priests speaking through hidden holes in pagan statues, oracles at Delphi, miracles at Lourdes, séances in darkened rooms . . . It never changed. People wanted to believe and so they did and to hell with rationality. And so Cam lugged a dying alien across interplanetary space so that she could comfort herself by aiding in her own self-deception. Lucca walked over and touched the old man’s bare chest. Still warm. The chest and upper arms, Lucca now saw, were crossed with scars, some old and some barely healed.

  Behind him, Cam blurted fiercely, “I killed at least a dozen men on B. No—more. Maybe as many as two dozen.”

  He turned slowly toward her. “You killed natives?”

  “Yes. Burned them with the laser gun you wouldn’t carry.”

  “Cam—”

  “So don’t talk to me about illusion and reality like I know you were going to, Lucca. . . . Don’t condescend to me the way you did every day on the voyage out—just don’t. You’re the one who’s been living with illusion, staying on this safe and friendly planet, having all the miracles we were sent here to witness just dropped in your lap. Experiencing them yourself. And then whining through all of it.”

  “Going blind didn’t feel like much of a miracle,” Lucca said dryly. Her anger had steadied him. Suddenly he realized that this trait—that she made him feel more competent, superior to her—was why he’d had the affair with her on the ship. Not, as he’d thought, because she looked like Gianna. The realization rattled him.

  She said, “We’re taking Aveo to the village. He’s going to have his chance to matter to something. Now get going.”

  She was hysterical. Lucca switched to soothing rationality. “Cam, it’s cold out there. Really cold. Even if we wrap him up completely, he’s very weak. He could die of exposure.”

  “Then Soledad will move the shuttle to the village.”

  “No,” Lucca said, and braced himself for a fight. “I don’t want the villagers seeing another shuttle. I fit in there now, Cam. I need that acceptance in order to go on witnessing here until I figure out what’s really going on with the telepathy. I don’t want their acceptance of me strained.”

  Soledad, her face on the wall screen, said, “He’s right, Cam. It’s one thing to take a stranger to a native village but another to—”

  “Shut up, Soledad! It’s my call, you don’t have any authority on-planet!”

  Lucca said quietly, “But Kular A is my planet, Cam.”

  She stared at him across the Kularian’s still body, and suddenly Lucca saw in her eyes the person who had, indeed, killed a dozen men, burning them down where they stood. Had she changed, or had this ferocity been present always under her impulsive theatrics? Lucca took a step away from her, very aware all at once that he was not armed and she was. The moment spun out. Before it could break, the old man made a sound.

  It was low, a rattle far back in his throat, almost a growl. Lucca had never heard such a sound before, but he knew immediately what it was. The old man was dead.

  Cam knew it, too. She didn’t scream, to Lucca’s surprise. She looked down at him, said once, “Aveo,” and knelt beside the shuttle chair, with its light alien webbing. Turning her face away from Lucca, she laid her cheek against the old man’s chest and put her arms around him.

  Lucca looked away. This moment was private. But only a part of his mind was taken up with her. It was himself he thought of, realizing that since Gianna had died, there was no one for whom he would have knelt, wept, felt as Cam was feeling now.

  THE TWO OF THEM TRUDGED ACROSS the plain dazzling with sunlight, bleak with emptiness. Cam wore half of Lucca’s furs and blankets, but now Lucca wasn’t cold. Partly it was the sun, strong as good wine. Mostly, however, it was anger that she was here at all, that she hadn’t gotten back into her shuttle and flown to Kular B, where she belonged. There had been a terrible three-way argument there in the cramped shuttle, beside Aveo’s cooling body. And Soledad, to Lucca’s fury, had sided with Cam.

  “You don’t actually know that what you have in your village is telepathy, and—”

  “And you have a better idea?” Lucca had shouted, and disliked himself for the shouting.

  “—and if it is telepathy,” Soledad had continued, the skin of her face drawn tight with tension, “this is a perfect chance to prove it. An unparalleled chance. Think, Lucca—you yourself said that maybe the other Kularians did know about that old lady’s hunting as a girl. That maybe she told them long ago and forgot. But there’s no way they can know about Aveo. So take Cam to the village and see what they pull from her mind.”

  “No.”

  There was a long silence, and then Soledad said in a strange voice, “Are you afraid of what Cam might discover about your Kularians?”

  The suggestion outraged him. “She shouldn’t have come here.”

  “But I am here,” Cam said coldly. “And how can you stop me from following you to the village?”

  He couldn’t, of course. She could simply trail him. Even if he could outrun her, which he doubted, his footsteps would be clear in the snow. Lucca had no choice. He said, wanting to hurt her, “And what will you do with the old man’s body? Leave it to rot in the shuttle? The ground is too frozen to bury it. Will you leave it on the plain? Go ahead, predators will eat it by noon. Or were you planning on dragging it to the village, so the Kularians can do the same thing? Then you can ‘witness’ Aveo being torn apart.”

  Soledad said, “Lucca!” Cam merely gazed at him and then turned away.

  Ashamed, Lucca left the shuttle and stared at the plain until his eyes burned. Cam closed the door behind him, and for a moment he thought she had changed her mind after all, that she would instruct Soledad to lift the shuttle. But after a few minutes Cam came out, carrying Aveo’s body. Still dressed in only her thin tunic and leggings, she put the body on the ground beside the shuttle and said to Lucca, “Move away. Now.”

  He followed her about a hundred yards. The shuttle lifted a few feet, and suddenly the bottom blazed. Lucca blinked at the bright light; he hadn’t known it could do that. The Atoners had said that landings would disturb nothing, and the ground around his own crashed shuttle hadn’t been scorched. But when the shuttle once again set down, the plain bore a snowless crater, and Aveo’s body was gone.

  “Let’s go,” Cam sai
d tonelessly. All at once she shivered. Wordlessly Lucca stripped off half his fur garments and handed them to her. At least her boots looked sturdy. She put on the skins and followed him across the brilliant plain.

  26: CAM

  SNOW. COLD. LIGHT. She registered sensations in shards, each piercing her mind like a small knife. The plain faded in and out, and what she saw during the “out” was men dying, burned down by her gun. Falling in heaps on the tiled gallery. Collapsing in the tent at the army camp, smelling of seared meat, their light eyes staring at her in reproach, their blood staining the ground. And Aveo, his kindness and intelligence leaking out as if a person were no more than a cheap plastic bottle. Every death, even Aveo’s, because of her.

  She was a killer.

  Panic rose in her, then. She was a killer. Wasn’t there any way to make this right? All her life there had been ways to make things right, to undo terrible things—what terrible things? Her life, that she had thought so stunted back in Nebraska, she now saw had had no terrible things. And no way to make it right . . .

  “Cam?”

  There must be something she could do, and if Lucca’s village could . . . She was drowning, and she knew it, grabbing at driftwood to stay afloat. Not drowning, not water—fire, the smell of burning flesh and men falling onto the tiled gallery floor . . .

  “Cam!”

  Lucca’s voice rescued her from the abyss. He had stopped several yards behind her, without her even noticing. She loped back and saw him standing in the snow, his face in shadow as the sun rose higher behind him. As she approached he called in a strangled voice, “I can’t hear.”

  “What?”