Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress
A: Thank you for your interview, Ms. O’Kane.
O: What? You mean that’s it? That’s all the time I get? [NOTE: INTERVIEWEE IS STRONGLY ACTING CONTRARY TO PREINTERVIEW BRIEFING.]
A: What more would you like?
O: Can I ask some questions?
A: [long silence] Yes. [NOTE: THIS SILENCE OF 6.3 SECONDS HAS BEEN NOTED IN NO OTHER INTERVIEW RECORDED BY USAF INTELLIGENCE OR BY THOSE COUNTRIES PARTICIPATING IN THE ALIEN DATA-SHARING INITIATIVE.]
O: Why do you want to send human Witnesses to those other planets anyway? You’re the ones with starships, why not go yourselves?
A: We cannot answer that.
O: You mean—and I say this with all due respect, sir—that you choose to not answer it?
A: Yes.
O: Well, okay. Then . . . you call yourselves “Atoners.” What are you atoning for? [NOTE: STRONGLY ACTING CONTRARY TO PREINTERVIEW BRIEFING. INTERVIEWEE WAS SPECIFICALLY AND REPEATEDLY INSTRUCTED NOT TO ASK THIS, AS A MATTER OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS.]
A: Were you told to not ask that question?
O: Well . . . yes.
A: Then why did you ask it, Ms. O’Kane?
O: Because I . . . Oh, fuck, I really blew it, didn’t I? You’re not going to accept me as a Witness. So I don’t have anything to lose, but I still would like to know. Shit, the whole world would like to know! What are you atoning for?
A: We choose to not answer that.
O: Okay. Your right. Anyway, thank you for the trip up here. I never thought . . . This is something I’ll remember my whole life. And I wish you luck, sir, with your project, whatever it is.
A: Thank you.
DATE: May 16, 2020
INTERVIEW RESULT: Interviewee
Accepted
3: AVEO
THE SOLDIERS CAME FOR HIM at his son’s burial. Aveo saw them on the other side of the pit, which was already half-filled with wrapped bodies. Although a few of the green burial cloths were spider-silk, smooth and glossy, most were only coarse sarel fiber. The corpses of the very poor were barely wrapped at all, merely wound with two token strips of rough cloth around chest and head. Over all the dead, of whatever caste, lay the clumps of lime that partly masked the reek of decay. Ojea had not yet been covered. Aveo’s son’s strong young body, decently wrapped in green to please the Goddess that Aveo did not believe in, lay on top of several shovelfuls of white lime, a pristine bed.
Ojea had always valued cleanliness.
The soldiers were silhouetted against the moon, rising huge on the horizon. They marched along the edge of the pit, four of them in bronze breastplates and helmets, plus a cul with the royal slashes of blue painted on his bare breast. The mourners around Aveo, none of whom had come for Ojea, melted away. Aveo didn’t run. It would have been undignified, and useless.
“Aveo ol Imbro.” It was not a question. They did not give him his title.
“I am Aveo ol Imbro.”
“Come with us.”
Aveo did, a little surprised that he was not struck, or tied, or even touched. The four soldiers formed a square around him and marched him toward the city. The wind followed, smelling of death and lime and loss.
Death lay on the hot land as well. Fields that should have been bursting with grain near harvest had already been stripped. Broken stalks poked at the sky. Empty gleisin pens, shorn orchards, all gone to feed the army. What would the city eat this winter?
He would not be alive to find out.
At dusk the silent procession entered the West Gate. Beggars and slaves shrank from the soldiers; market women cast down their eyes and made themselves small. To Aveo’s surprise, the cul didn’t lead him toward the prison close against the city wall. Instead the cul marched toward the palace, through its gates, and—yes—to the Hall of the Goddess of All Green.
Aveo had been here before, many years ago, when everything had been different. A reception for scholars from the university. Wine, laughter, smiling slaves in white skirts serving delicacies. Uldunu Three had been on the throne then, not his murderous son. Before the assassination, before the war, before the university had been closed and the slaves stripped and branded. Before.
They marched into the Hall. His Most Sacred and Exalted King Uldunu Four sat on the Green Throne. Advisors in their red robes clustered behind him. Aveo recognized Ilni and Omoro, and looked away. Which of you betrayed the university, betrayed the city, betrayed my son?
Aveo and the cul halted before the throne, sank to their knees, and crossed their arms over their breasts. The soldiers, who were not people but only utensils, remained standing. They had no souls and thus were incapable, like animals or plants, of meaningful homage to the Goddess of All Green and Her son, Uldunu. Aveo gazed at the king’s toenails, painted with tiny green swirls and encased in green sandals set with gold.
“Up,” Uldunu said.
Aveo rose.
“Raise eyes. You are a traitor, Aveo ol Imbro.”
It was not permitted to speak, since Aveo had not been asked a question. It was permitted, now, to gaze, and he and the king studied each other. Aveo saw a young man fantastically painted, every inch of his bare-chested body in intricate green designs, petals inside petals, sensuous curving vines and lashing textured branches, a strong and brutal body turned into a support for the living world. The king’s short skirt was green spider-silk. His eyes were bluer than those of the father he had murdered.
What did Uldunu see? A coarse brown skirt instead of the red Aveo had once worn, no caste paint, a man neither young nor old but infinitely more aged than before grief had broken him.
“You are a traitor,” Uldunu repeated. “You advised my father, and your son led a pathetic uprising against me. You deserve to die as he did, and in the same agony. You deserve that your soul, like his, should lie forever fallow, never blooming in Her sight. But the Goddess of All Green has another task for you.”
Aveo failed to keep surprise from his face.
“You were a scholar,” the king said, his voice full of contempt for such a pursuit. He waved his hand at the advisors behind him. “These men tell me you studied the languages and customs and false gods of those cities that are our enemies. You have lived among them.”
They had not been enemies then. Nor had their gods proven any more or less false than the Goddess of All Green. But a man like the king could never understand how Aveo had come to believe that, nor the emptiness that lack of belief left him with now. Ojea . . .
“You will use this traitorous knowledge now for the glory of the Goddess. In Memenat a woman has hatched from an egg fallen out of the sky. She cannot be killed by spears or fire, so perhaps she is an evil goddess from an enemy city. But she cannot kill those who attack her, so perhaps she is not a goddess. You will go there and talk to her in your enemy languages and find out why she is here.”
Aveo blinked. Accustomed as he was to the stupid and blood-hungry childishness of the king, and to the endless foolish talk about religion and goddesses, this was something new. A woman from an egg, a egg from the sky . . . He had heard no rumors that Uldunu Four was mad.
“You will also discover how we can kill her. If you fail to discover that, you will die a far worse death than your traitor son. Go.”
The cul pushed Aveo, not hard, and he fell to his knees. The green-and-gold sandals below thick legs moved away. When he had gone, Aveo rose, a little dazed.
Evidently Uldunu Four not only held the power of life and death, he could also change the essential nature of the real. Aveo had been a traitor and a condemned man but no longer a scholar. Now he was still a traitor, no longer a condemned man, and restored to being a scholar. Also, apparently, something else: an emissary to a woman hatched from an egg fallen out of the sky.
JUST BEFORE THE ASSASSINATION OF ULDUNU Three, Aveo had composed a treatise on the relationship of reality to kulith, the game played ubiquitously in the city by everyone from advisors to slaves. How much of what we believe, this treatise asked, is shaped by
Despite omitting that final question, with the wealth of examples he had gathered to support it, the treatise was a dangerous one. At the university, old Ubapa had urged Aveo not to let it be read or copied or archived. It could get him imprisoned. Aveo had not listened, and Ubapa had been right, and here was Aveo walking too fast along a hot and dusty road, emissary to a goddess he did not believe could exist.
They had been on the road four days. The moon, green and blue, now filled the sky. Aveo, not a soldier, was unused to the exertion or the pace. His feet burned in their worn sandals, his muscles ached, his face burned from the sun. Sweat matted his skirt to his bony shanks. He stank.
“With pain comes delusion.” That had been Ibrix, writing three centuries ago, and the Sacred Scholar had been right. Sometimes, trudging along on feet that blossomed into fire, his head light, Aveo thought he saw Ojea in the heat shimmers of the road ahead. His son was a child, a man, an infant in the arms of the King’s Torturer. Aveo cried out. A soldier reached out to cuff him, stayed his hand, and scowled.
On the fifth day they arrived at Memenat. That city had been captured, sacked, and burned. The bulk of the army had moved on, but two entire detachments of soldiers had remained, encircling the fallen sky egg with a makeshift city of their own. Aveo passed through wooden gates set into high dirt walls. He crossed plank bridges over deep trenches dug by newly enslaved Memenati. This shoddy city of tents and clay was nonetheless rich with plunder, and Aveo noted the jewels and rich robes on the prostitutes, the roasting meats beside the cook tents. His stomach ached with hunger.
Despite the new riches, the shadow city showed surprising order. The prostitutes were confined to one area, the dirt streets were swept, the soldiers on duty stood sober and at attention, their breastplates polished. When Aveo was marched through the staring camp and turned over to its commander, he saw why.
“Rem Aveo ol Imbro,” the commander said, and Aveo raised his eyes in astonishment. It was illegal to give him his scholarly title. Was it done from fear? A superstitious soldier might well be unsettled by events here: An egg fell out of the sky, a woman could not be pierced with a spear. Things were not as always supposed, and anything could happen next, the ground itself might well give way as just another illusion. Fear could make such a man overly careful, unwilling to invite divine retaliation in any quarter.
Commander Escio ol Escio was not such a man. He was short but very muscular, his bare chest painted with the blue whorls of his rank. Escio’s eyes met Aveo’s squarely. Light gray eyes, measuring, neither easily frightened nor easily duped. Aveo said, “Is it permitted to ask questions?”
“Yes. But would you first like to sit and to eat?”
Something broke in Aveo then, from fatigue and hunger and grief, and tears filled his eyes. He turned away. When he had mastered himself, the tent was empty, which almost brought the shameful tears again. When had he last encountered that much kindness?
The commander returned with a steaming plate of meat and stewed fruit. He busied himself while Aveo sat on a three-legged stool and ate it. Then Escio sat opposite him, hands on the knees exposed by his blue skirt. Escio’s voice was controlled, quiet. “The egg fell out of the sky eleven days ago. We attacked, but neither spears nor fire so much as blackened it. The next day the woman came out. She has come out every day, usually between noon and dusk. She just stands before her egg. For four days we attacked, and the spears slid off her and fell to the ground. Fire didn’t touch her. Then orders came to stop attacking and wait for a scholar from the king.”
Aveo risked a question. “Why did you attack her?”
“Those are my orders. Immediately attack all enemies and traitors.”
Aveo himself was a traitor. “Has she spoken?”
“No.”
“Does she carry a weapon?”
“Not visibly.”
“Describe her, please.”
“She dresses like a farmer of the north, in leggings and boots and brown cloth tunic. She bears no paint, of any caste. She is about as tall as you, and stands without fear. She looks young. She has dark skin, black hair, dark eyes.”
Dark, with boots rather than sandals. Aveo had a sudden hope that she might be from Pular, far to the north. He spoke Pularit.
But what kind of Pulari could fly through the sky in an egg? The Pulari were unsophisticated farmers and trappers, their huts made of mud and their kulith pieces of uncarved stone.
Aveo studied the commander, and took another risk. “You said your orders are to attack all enemies and traitors. Why did you decide the woman must be an enemy?”
Escio said, with the air of a man who knew full well what he was revealing, “I knew that the king would think she must be an enemy.”
“And you, Commander—what do you think she is?”
“I think as the king’s soldier.”
Disappointed, Aveo looked away. When the commander rose, he did, too. Escio said, “I will take you to the inner gate and wait with you until the woman comes out of her egg.”
“Thank you.”
“Rem Aveo. I play kulith at the sixteenth level. I read your treatise on kulith and reality, about how what we believe is shaped by what is around us. The egg is not an illusion. It is here.”
Aveo turned in surprise—such reading and observations from a soldier!—but Escio was already leading the way out of the tent, toward the woman fallen out of the sky.
4: LUCCA
HE DREAMED, WHILE the alien medical devices did their work inside his body.
Lucca was vaguely aware of the jolting of the travois, vaguely aware of his own methodical mind forming questions: Does the travois mean they haven’t discovered the wheel? How long have these beasts been domesticated? But in and out of the questions, of the fevered dreams, flitted shadowy forms, illusions. Gianna, alive and well, strolling through the Maduro vineyards and laughing at him over her shoulder. Cam, naked in his bunk aboard the Atoner ship. He tried to tell Cam about his dead wife, but she put out a hand, laughing, to stop him, and the hand grew long and leafy like the Tuscany vines and Lucca cried out and woke himself.
The man with the long mustache leaned over him and spoke, and the implant whispered in his ear, “Are you well, fellow-traveler-on-the-first-road?”
The translator had listened to the Kularians while Lucca slept. Now it whispered into his ear implant as the man spoke, and then it whispered again, giving Lucca the meaningless sounds he parroted aloud. The process was clumsy and slow, despite Lucca’s intense practice on Luna and during the voyage out. Finally he managed, “I’m fine,” and then, all at once, he was fine. The fever vanished like a blown match, and he was enveloped in a sudden glow of neurological well-being. Also the result of the Atoner meds? He hoped not; he wanted to see everything as clearly as possible, free of chemical illusions.
He expected the Kularian to continue the conversation, to ask Lucca’s name or where he came from or why he’d been trapped in a silver metal egg in the middle of nowhere. But the man walked away, striding ahead of the rest toward some structures distant on the endless scrub plain.
Lucca could see his breath; the air held the cold tingle of coming snow. Heavy clouds blotted the sky. Had Kular B risen, and had Cam landed on it successfully, or had her shuttle malfunctioned, too?
They neared the settlement and Lucca saw that it consisted of a circle of flimsy animal-skin tents that looked easy to take down and move. As people came curiously toward the travoi
The group all talked at once, waving their arms and stamping their feet, and the translator couldn’t keep up. It offered Lucca random phrases: “found in a metal skrog (untranslatable)” and “broken leg” and “three guwats (untranslatable)” and then, three times in rapid succession, “traveler-on-the-second-road.” Lucca detected no hostility or fear toward himself and only minimal curiosity—how was that possible?
Everyone went into the largest tent except for two boys, their mustaches as yet only downy fuzz, who grinned at him, stamped their feet, and blushed.
Dusk was falling, the late and lingering northern twilight of a nineteen-degree axial tilt. It suffused the air, still laden with dust from the passing storm, with a silver-gray glow. Kularians emerged from the large tent, laughing and talking. They walked a short ways out to the plain. The two boys picked up the poles of Lucca’s travois and pulled it after them. Everyone, including Lucca, formed a circle, and one man walked into the middle of it.
Lucca raised himself on his elbows where the boys had plopped him flat. A hunting-celebration ritual of some kind? An initiation, or a religious rite? Or just the equivalent of a university club, with what Cam had called horseplay, now that the men were away from their women? Probably very mild horseplay; Lucca couldn’t see these genial, incurious people engaging in hazing or orgies or dangerous dares.
The man in the center of the circle sat down. So did everyone else, except for a big man Lucca had noticed before. No one spoke. Lucca had the impression that whatever needed to be said had been taken care of in the large tent. The big man sat next to the man in the center. Everyone smiled and nodded, probably prevented from foot stamping only because they were all sitting down. As native rituals went, this one wasn’t very colorful.