Nancy Kress - Steal Across the Sky

STEAL ACROSS THE SKY

Tor Books by Nancy Kress

_______________________

Beakers Dozen

Beggars and Choosers

Beggars Ride

Crossfire

Crucible

Maximum Light

Oaths and Miracles

Probability Moon

Probability Space

Probability Sun

Steal Across the Sky

Stinger

NANCY KRESS

____________________________

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,
and events portrayed in this novel are either products
of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

STEAL ACROSS THE SKY

Copyright 2009 by Nancy Kress

All rights reserved.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kress, Nancy.

Steal across the sky / Nancy Kress.1st ed.

p. cm.

A Tom Doherty Associates book.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1986-9

ISBN-10: 0-7653-1986-1

1. Human-alien encountersFiction. 2. Life on other planetsFiction. I. Title.

PS3561.R46 S67 2009

813'.54dc22

2008046432

First Edition: February 2009

Printed in the United States of America

0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Marty,
Kings pawn to Kings pawn 4...

Now the day is over,
Night is drawing nigh;
Shadows of the evening
Steal across the sky.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

History... is indeed little more than
the register of the crimes, follies, and
misfortunes of mankind.

EDWARD GIBBON

It aint necessarily so.

IRA GERSHWIN

WELL, CAM SAID, rising on her toes and leaning toward the bridges main screen, there they are.

Lucca, despite the tightness in his throat, was startled into laughter. All the hoping to be chosen for this insane mission, all the agonizing over the Atoners unknown selection criteria, all the complicated family reactions and media furor and governmental observation, all the tension on the voyage outand then Cam greets the alien star system with the most mundane understatement possible. And this was Cam, an American who thrived on flamboyance like vineyards on sun. Although perhaps that was the point. Cam was making an uncharacteristic effort to be careful.

Soledad scowled. Lucca understood: Soledad had to be viewing the Kular System with mixed emotions. She was the alternate Witness, and neither Lucca nor Cam had died on the trip to Kular. Neither had fallen ill, gone insane, changed his or her mind. Cam and Lucca were going down to the twin planets below, and Soledad was not. Nonetheless, Soledad was generous enough to purge the scowl from her face and say, I wish you both luck. Lucca took her hand and squeezed it.

He didnt touch Cam.

On-screen, Kular A and Kular B sparkled with the magnificence of the remote. The binary planet system rotated around a common center of gravity, 1.4 AU from their G5 star. At some time in the unimaginable past they had formed from the same dust cloud, and their composition and gravity were similar. That much the Atoners had told their human surrogates.

Neither planet had any moons, although each would dominate the others sky. On Kular A, the pole end of the one giant continent was obscured by a massive dust storm, but the rest shone clear with blue seas and green flora. Clouds drifted over the one inhabited continent on B. Or maybe it wasnt the only inhabited continent any longer. The Atoners had not, they said, visited Kular in five hundred Terran years. They would never visit it again. Thats what human Witnesses were for.

Lets go to the shuttle bay, Cam said. More mundane speech. But she was right; commonplace words were what was needed right now. Procedural speech, unambiguous speech, careful speech that didnt imply grandiose emotions that could only prove embarrassing later. Speech such as, for instance, I will love you forever.

Yes, Lucca said carefully, lets go to the shuttle bay.

Soledad led the way; she was, as of the moment the two shuttles launched, mission coordinator. Cam followed eagerly, looking beautiful as ever but so different in the rough tunic, leggings, and boots that the Atoners had supplied, her wild black hair loose to her shoulders. He was used to her in inexpensive American clothes, trashy and sexy. But then, he probably looked just as outlandish to her. Only Soledad, her stocky body clothed in jeans and a sweater, looked normal.

Lucca trailed the two young women, glancing back once more at Kular A. In a few more hours he would be down there, a Witness for the Atoners of Neu, a part of the aliens grand, remorseful, incomprehensible program to repent of long-ago sins against humanity, sins that humans themselves hadnt even known had been committed.

IT STARTED TO GO WRONG the minute the shuttle hit the atmosphere. Insertion was supposed to happen with the same minimum disruption to passengers as all the other Atoner craft. Lucca didnt understand Atoner engineeringnobody on Earth understood itbut hed been assured that the shuttle would go down smooth as good chocolate. Hed been so startled to hear that phrase from the Atoner in the Dome on the moonwhat did the Atoners know about chocolate? They must have learned the words from American television. Smooth as good chocolate.

Lucca screamed as he was flung violently against his webbed restraints. The shuttle lurched crazily. On the commlink Soledad shouted, Lucca! Lucca! but he couldnt answer her. Pressure closed his throat, burst capillaries in his eyes, took his ability to speak or move. Im going to dieAve Maria, piena di grazia...

Later, he would not remember that he had prayed.

HE WASNT DEAD, even though the shuttle was now silent as the grave, and as dark. Lucca hung upside down in his webbing. His eyes burned and his left leg ached. But pressure no longer tortured him, and he was able to free his arms.

Soledad? he said aloud. No answer; the shuttle commlink wasnt functioning. E che cazzo. He fumbled inside his rough woolen tunic for the portable commlink on his belt. Soledad?

Barely any delay; the Atoner ship empty of Atoners orbited only three hundred klicks above the planet. Lucca! What happened? Are you all right?

The shuttle crashed, I think. Or not exactly crashed If it had, hed be dead. but came down too hard. Something malfunctioned. Where am I?

About a thousand klicks north of where wed planned. At the southern edge of the dust storm, actually. Are you hurt?

No, I... yes. Lucca unfastened the last of his webbing and fell to the ceiling of the shuttle, which was now the floor. It took all his effort not to scream again. I think my leg is broken.

Soledad swore in Spanish. Shall I come and get you?

No! Abort now? He had been on Kular less than ten minutes! Im going to use the med kit to set my leg. Call you when I have anything to report. He thrust the commlink back into his hidden belt, his fingers brushing bare skin. All at once that brought up an image of Cam, naked in his bunk aboard the ship, which in turn brought up an image of Gianna, equally naked.

Not now.

The med kit was stored during flight in a metal cabinet now so twisted and smashed that Lucca couldnt get it open. Several minutes of groping in the dark determined that. All at once panic, the genuine unlovely thing, split his heart down its center seam. He hit the controls for the shuttle door, then pulled and pushed at it, but it wouldnt open. He was trapped, a sardine in an alien can whose workings he did not understand.