Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress
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.
48: FOCUS GROUP REPORT
Prepared for Carruthers Memorial Park, Beaton, CA,
by J. L. Salazar Marketing, Inc.
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.
49: SOLEDAD
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
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.
Was that the truth? Immediately Soledad hated herself. She had no reason not to trust James. He commuted two hours each way two or three nights a week; he spent every weekend here; he was moving in. He willingly spent nearly all their time together inside her small house, for her safety, without any signs of restlessness or boredom. She would not let her suspicious nature destroy this relationship, as it had destroyed her affairs with José and Wayne. She would not.
She said lightly, “Then I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“Count on it.” He embraced her again and she rested her head on his shoulder. This, only this, if I can just keep this forever . . . Outside the kitchen window, the eastern horizon began to pale.
“Listen,” Soledad said, “did you hear that soft hooting? We have an owl living close by.”
“What?”
“Listen . . . that. An owl.”
James laughed. “Sweetheart, that’s not an owl.”
“It’s not?”
“You’re such a city girl. No, it’s not an owl—it’s a mourning dove. Light gray-brown with black spots on their wings, and when they mate, they preen each other’s feathers.” Ostentatiously he stroked her hair, and she laughed.
A dove. Not an owl.
But when he’d gone, still laughing, to the shower, she wondered. Hadn’t James told her that he, like she, had lived his whole life in cities?
AT DAWN THE SUN BROKE gloriously over the mountains. Soledad decided to take a walk in the woods; maybe she could see the morning dove. Curious that it was called that when most often she heard it at dusk.
A walk in the woods—any woods—was a more foreign activity than the voyage to Kular in an alien spaceship. The voyage had involved cramped quarters, emotional complications, unknown dangers, technology she used without understanding it—all features of life in Manhattan. But a woods was genuinely strange to her.
She made her way gingerly between the first trees, glancing back often. The ground here rose steeply between tall pines. Soledad was surprised to see that the pine branches didn’t start growing from the trunk until five or six feet off the ground, and that the lower ones were sparse and brown needled. This was good because it made it easy to walk among them, and because she could see for a fair distance all around her, including back down to her little rented house. She was proud of herself for figuring out that the lower branches must die when the growing upper ones blocked the sunlight.
And how good the trees smelled! The trees, the air, the rich loamy smell of dead leaves choking the tiny creek in a ravine to her right. Why hadn’t she done this before? She was going to be a country girl now. Maybe she’d get a dog to take on walks in the woods; James said he liked dogs. A Labrador or a golden retriever. It must be over fifty degrees out, a gorgeous spring day, and, yes, that was a chipmunk darting across her path. Much cuter than city squirrels, it raced up a pine trunk as Soledad tipped back her head both to watch it and for the sheer pleasure of sunlight striking her face through a gap in the pines.
Something metallic glinted halfway up the chipmunk’s tree.
She squinted but couldn’t see anything more than a persistent glint. She might have just shrugged—didn’t chipmunks carry shiny trinkets to their nests, or was that some other animal she’d read about?—except that this was one of the few pines with sturdy branches within three feet of the ground. Coincidence?
She hoisted her foot onto the bottom branch, grasped the one above it, and pulled herself up. Stocky, she was nonetheless strong, and by staying close to the trunk she managed to climb without sending herself crashing to the ground. Panting, she reached her goal. Her house lay in a clear line of sight to the south.
The bark had been stripped partway off the tree and then replaced to hide a dark metal box. But something had chewed part of the flap of bark that was supposed to act as a concealer—were there animals that ate bark? Soledad didn’t know. She pulled the box, a cube no more than three inches on a side, free from the pine and scrubbed resin off the tiny raised writing on the bottom.
EVERKNOW SURVEILLANCE 66387-J-89
Carefully Soledad lowered herself back down the quivering branches, dropping the last three feet to release a cloud of fragrance from the needles below. No one was in sight. She started to run, tripped on a tree root, picked herself up. She had to reach the house, had to call Diane. If this was government surveillance, Soledad sure the hell should have been told about i
She ran faster.
50: CAM
THE DREAM ABOUT AVEO CAME AGAIN. The old man stood bare chested in his rough brown skirt, but the flesh drooped in gobbets from his bones and the bones gleamed like knives, glossy and sharp. Aveo 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 . . .” She cried out and woke.
Why now? Now, when things were supposed to be getting better? She was going to the moon with Frank, it had all been arranged with J. S. Farrington. She and Frank were going to get the seeing-the-dead genes put right back into human beings. Scientists would add them to people or to embryos or something. . . . Cam wasn’t exactly sure how that might work. But scientists would know, and they would do it, and it would show everyone that the afterlife was real and so they could stop killing each other over that controversy. And then Aveo would stay out of Cam’s dreams.
Three A.M. She put her hands up over her face.
This was so much harder than anyone knew, even Angie Bernelli. The constant performing, the e-mail and death threats that Angie tried to keep from her but Cam insisted on seeing anyway, the lunatics out for her blood. Well, she could handle all that. It was the memories and dreams that got her. People thought she was so cheerful and energetic, but when the memories and dreams came and sex failed her—as it had lately, all the time, she’d given up on it—the only thing that helped was talking to someone who understood. Except that nobody really did, except The Six. And most of them, for reasons she didn’t get, avoided Cam.