Steal Across the Sky (31 page)

James was gone. His clothes remained, his handheld, his notebook, his books. She rushed into the bathroom; his toothbrush lay on the sink beside his razor, fine gold hairs caught in the blade. Soledad whirled on Diane. “Wasn’t there an agent with James?”

“Of course not. He wasn’t a prisoner, and it’s you that we’re assigned to.” Diane moved closer, took Soledad’s hand. She shook Diane off.

He was really gone. Without a word, a note, a meaning. She felt his absence in the very air, which all at once wasn’t sufficient to inflate her lungs properly. It was all true, all Lucca’s terrible statements. James had worn an Atoner shield, he had decked Lucca’s man, all these days and nights with Soledad he had been other than he seemed, he was somehow connected to the Atoners . . . how?

And he was gone. How? Why?

Lucca’s questions. Hers, too, only with different meanings.
How could James do this to me? Why would he do this to me?

She was going to find out. And then—God help him.

She turned slowly and Diane Lovett, well-trained Agency operative who had seen service in the most brutal African war of the century, took a surprised step backward from the expression in Soledad’s eyes.

Beyond the hotel window, more clouds veiled the glowing moon.

THE FARRINGTON SHUTTLE LIFTED
. The bone-crushing pressure surprised Frank, despite three days of training. All of his memories of his time as an Atoner Witness were blurry, as if they happened a long time ago and to somebody else. He suspected the blurriness might be deliberate. But now the Atoner shuttle to the moon sprang to his mind sharp and clear as if under a magnifying glass: the round, nearly empty gray room with three comfortable gray chairs equipped with light webbing, the smooth upward glide like a good elevator. Amira in her orange sari and Rod in his plaid flannel shirt, all three of them staring out the window as Earth fell away beneath them. Then, after just six hours, the gentle set-down a quarter mile from the Atoner Dome.

Nothing like this, nothing.

Eight people, six of them tourists and the other two Farrington pilots, sat strapped into reclining seats in what was essentially a small van. For three days they would sit, eat, sleep, and piss in these seats. Rockets screamed below Frank, the atmosphere screamed ahead of him, and Cam O’Kane screamed beside him. What had she expected? The Langford Reusable Single Stage to Orbit Launch Vehicle was “a major breakthrough in space technology”—they’d been told so over and over. It had accelerated space travel by decades.

“Shut up,” Frank gasped to Cam. She did, but she shifted her eyes sideways to glare at him.

Abruptly the pressure eased. Frank flexed his hands and feet. A cheerful, prerecorded voice began to speak. “Welcome to Farrington Tours, ladies and gentlemen! We’re so glad you’re with us, and let me assure you
that the worst is now over. Next up is a genuine treat. In just a few minutes, our trajectory will allow you all your
first ever
glimpse of the moon free from the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere!”

Frank began to laugh.

Is your murder mystery getting the brush-off from editors in
the new, “post-Atoner” publishing craze? Here’s how to
update your plot so it’s sure to sell!

by Lawrence Crandell

Agatha Christie and Scott Turow don’t cut it anymore. Nowadays, in mysteries that actually sell, Hercule Poirot and Rusty Sabich would just turn to the victims’ ghosts and be told who killed their bodies. Mystery Writers of America reports a 60% drop in purchases of “classic” mystery plots by the big publishing houses and a whopping 40% rise in purchases of mysteries set on the “alternate Atoner Earth,” in which humanity’s seeing-the-dead genes were left intact.

So does this mean that your half-completed novel is deader than the corpse in Chapter One?
No!
Just follow these five tips for reworking your murder plot to reflect the new parameters, and you’re already halfway to a sale!

Tip #1 . . .

DIANE LOVETT SAID
, “You can’t, Soledad.”

“Really? Just watch me.”

“I didn’t think you were the type to commit suicide by crazy.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“But that’s what will happen.”

The two women stood in what had been Soledad and James’s hotel room, one on each side of the double bed. James’s things lay in neat piles beside an open, empty suitcase. On top of one pile was the blue cashmere sweater Soledad had first seen on the morning after Fengmo was shot. James had worn it since then and a small stain, catsup or grease or taco sauce, discolored the soft wool a few inches below the neck band. Soledad couldn’t seem to move her eyes from the stain, but not because she was afraid to face Diane. She felt neither fear nor anything else, just this numbness that she already knew wasn’t going to last.

She repeated, since it didn’t seem to have taken effect the first time, “You’re fired, Diane.”

“You don’t ‘fire’ a federal agent. You didn’t hire me and you don’t fire me.”

“Fine. But you haven’t charged me with any crime and unless you do, I don’t have to talk to you, don’t have to have you living with me, don’t have to exist by your rules. That’s all over now.”

“If you’d rather work with a different agent—”

“That’s not it.” Still Soledad’s eyes stuck to that stain on James’s sweater. When had he gotten it? Had they been eating dinner together, laughing, casually touching, in that other time before this chasm opened in her life? There was no crossing it, this chasm. No going back.

Diane moved closer. From the corner of her eye, Soledad saw the
older woman do something she’d never done before—reach toward a breast pocket and then pull her hand back. So she’d once been a smoker. Odd that Soledad didn’t know that, odd that she didn’t know Diane’s age. She didn’t know anything.

James
—

So it was starting now. The numbness would wear off and the pain would begin, and it would be bad. Very bad. The only thing that might help was answers, and she was going to get them.

Diane said, “Why are you blaming the Agency? We didn’t know about James—God, do you think if we’d known that he had an Atoner shield, that he was somehow
in contact with an Atoner
, we wouldn’t have been all over him? I’m as upset as you—”

“No. You’re not. Don’t be stupid.”

“Sorry.” Diane moved closer still, but Soledad kept her gaze on the blue cashmere sweater. Catsup? Grease? Taco sauce? And when?

“You’re going to search for James, aren’t you? Well, so are we. There’s no reason we can’t work together to—”

“No.”

“You’re going to work through Lucca, aren’t you? Lucca’s good, Soledad, he’s rich and smart and he has a lot of resources at his command, but we’re better. We’re the United States government, for God’s sake! Don’t you think we have a better chance of finding James for you?”

Soledad, unable to stop herself, picked up the sweater. But once she had it in her hands, it just hung there, limp. Empty. Finally she looked at Diane, whose mouth was pressed so tightly closed that she looked lipless.

Soledad said, “You wouldn’t be finding James for me. And you don’t know where he is now, do you, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You didn’t know about his contact with an Atoner—
Lucca
had to tell you. You didn’t even know about the surveillance in the woods outside my house. You didn’t protect Sara Dziwalski. I know the Agency’s going to follow me and record me and do everything short of crawling inside my skin and you’d do that, too, if you could, to try to get to James and so get to the Atoners. I can’t help all that. But I don’t have to work with you. And I won’t.”

She shrugged off her jacket and yanked James’s sweater over her
head. It was too long for her and sagged in the shoulders, but it fit across the bust. The cashmere was soft on her forearms and wrists, almost but not quite pushing her into emotion. Soledad picked up her jacket and purse and left the hotel.

SHE WAS FOLLOWED
, of course, although she didn’t see Diane or anyone else. But she had one ally: time. This had all happened so fast, the Agency wouldn’t have had much opportunity to add more surveillance to whatever they already had in place. If Soledad acted fast, she could do this.

She got a taxi and had it wait at a bank, where she drew out all the money in her account, a meager three thousand dollars. Then the same taxi on to Juana’s, where the phone might be bugged, but the apartment probably wasn’t, not yet.

“Soledad? Well, well, the big star traveler.” Juana stood blocking the doorway. No colorful skirts this time; Juana wore jeans and a man’s dirty shirt, and her pupils were big as dimes. Frilled out of her mind. What she called her mind.

So much the better.

“Juana, I want some information and I’m willing to pay you for it, plus for keeping your mouth shut.”

Juana’s dreamily scornful gaze sharpened; she wasn’t too frilled to ignore money. “What information?”

“Who else is here? Mama?”

“Nobody.”

Soledad made a quick circuit of the apartment, but Juana was telling the truth for once. Soledad faced her sister. “I’ll give you three hundred dollars to tell me where to find the journalist you set me up to. ‘Carl Lewis’ or—no, don’t even start, I
know
you did that—or whatever his real name is, plus another three hundred to not tell anybody that I asked.”

“Show me the money.”

Soledad had divided her money in the taxi, putting six hundred dollars in her bra. She pulled out the neckline of James’s sweater, drew out the money, and held it toward Juana like a zookeeper tempting a hyena. “Tell me. And if you lie, you’ll regret it, I warn you right now. I have powerful people helping me, including Lucca Maduro.”

Juana’s eyes flew from the money to her sister’s face. Juana wasn’t
stupid, but Soledad had wondered if Juana ever watched the news, would even recognize Lucca’s name. But apparently she did, although her next words were pure Juana: crafty and petty at the same time.

“He’s cute. You fucking him?”

“No. ‘Carl Lewis,’ Juana—how do I find him?”

“Okay. He came to me, but I got a card here someplace. . . .” She rummaged in a drawer filled with things Soledad didn’t want to see. At the back was a crumpled business card. Soledad could picture it: Lewis staring doubtfully at Juana. Weighing the risk of giving contact information to this lying user against the risk of Juana forgetting how to contact him at all when she’d lured Soledad back home. Finally handing over the card, which was Spartan in its grudging information. No graphic, holo, or occupation:

C
ARL
L
EWIS

(212) 555-6398

[email protected]

“Give me the money,” Juana said. “All of it. I won’t tell anybody what I gave you.”

She’d tell everything to the next person who walked through the door, which would undoubtedly be Diane or another agent. But Soledad had planned for this. She moved closer to Juana, now smelling her sister’s unwashed body plus the fruity, sick-sweet smell of frill. “Juana, did you see on the news what happened to Sara Dziwalski?”

“Who?”

Lucca was a handsome male; Sara was not. “The Witness who got blown up at that hospital in Texas last month.”

“Oh, yeah, I think I did hear something about that. . . .”

“She was a nurse and they got her at work, ripping her open and killing other people who just happened to be standing near her. Blood everywhere, you must have seen the pictures. Sara got it because she told someone something she shouldn’t have. And you’ll be in the same boat if you tell anybody about this visit or Carl Lewis. Believe me, I know.”

Juana believed her. Living where and how she did, Juana was always
ready to believe in violence, in retaliation, in revenge. Fury leaped in her eyes, the welcome relief of theatrics. “You bring this on me, on Mama—”

“Shove it, Juana. I’m not interested. Just don’t tell
anybody
what we said.”

As she opened the door, her back to Juana, Soledad put the business card in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. The card was filthy and the gesture melodramatic, but she didn’t know who might grab her just outside Juana’s door.

No one did. She walked downstairs and along the street. Litter blew in the gutter and the sidewalk was cracked, the raised and jagged edges briefly catching paper and plastic before another breeze tore them free. It was several blocks before she found a pay phone that wasn’t broken. Kids hooted at her and a few loitering men made comments she ignored, but she didn’t see the agents. No matter; they were there. At the phone, careful to cover the keyboard with her hand, she punched in 212-555-6398, prepared to talk fast before some unseen listening device captured her offer to him, and her offered payment.

Helen Keller in the 21st Century

by Laura Kendall

Imagine you are deaf. And blind. And mute. How can you understand sound and light and color?

You can’t, except through a powerful leap of imagination. Helen Keller came to believe that others experienced what she could not— but belief is not comprehension. Helen Keller adjusted to her limitations and made of her life a magnificent success. She had others help her do this, notably her gifted teacher, Annie Sullivan. Until Sullivan transformed her existence, the isolated Helen didn’t even realize that there
was
anything more to experience.

Since The Six returned to Earth, we have all become Helen Kellers. Many—perhaps most—go on living as they did before, unbelieving that the world holds a dimension of experience denied to humanity. They may be right. Certainly a “sense” for seeing the dead sounds fantastic— how would it work? What structures would the “deleted genes” have grown in our brains? Through what messenger particles would information be conveyed to those structures? Photons? Electrons? Microwaves? Something entirely off the electromagnetic spectrum as we know it?