Steal Across the Sky by Nancy Kress Page B

course it was in Pularit and the girl didn’t understand. She put down the two heavy pails of water, one by Cam’s pallet and one beside Aveo’s, and scurried away before Cam could rise.
    Was Cam supposed to bathe in front of Aveo? Not going to happen. But she did turn off her shield to wash her face, neck, and hands, by which time the girl was back with two bowls. This time Cam caught her by the arm and held her fast.
    “Cam,” she said, pointing to herself and smiling like an idiot. “You?”
    The girl trembled. Up close, she looked even younger, maybe no more than twelve or thirteen. Cam caught the pungent odor of semen.
    Son of a bitch
. Escio? Most likely. Every terrible story she’d ever heard of slave owners’ abusing their “property” raced into her mind, followed by a hatred so bilious she could taste it on her tongue.
    Aveo awoke. “Let her go, Ostiu Cam. She’s frightened of you.”
    “It’s not me she should be frightened of! That bastard raped her!”
    Aveo looked puzzled, and Cam realized that they’d hardly given the translator any vocabulary for either “raped” or “bastard.” Or maybe Aveo just looked like that because he was part of the same rotten society that sold children into sexual slavery.
    All at once she flashed on a sudden image of
herself and Lucca naked in his bunk aboard the Atoner ship and her saying, “You’re too innocent, Lucca.” Because despite his having been married, his sexual repertoire seemed a lot more limited than hers. But Lucca had laughed and said, “I’m innocent? Oh, cara, you have no idea how much you don’t know about the world outside Nebraska.”
    Aveo said, “Let her go, please.”
    “Not until I at least get a name for her! She’s not an object!”
    Aveo said something to the girl, who replied shakily. Aveo said in Pularit, “Her name is Obu.”
    “And tell me how to say thank you in her tongue.”
    “Dzazni.”
    “Dzazni, Obu,”
Cam said, and released her. Obu looked as if she’d been slapped. She ran out of the tent.
    Aveo said, “We could debate slavery, Ostiu Cam, all morning, but it would be better if you ate your breakfast. We have a long walk ahead of us.”
    “Walk?” she said blankly.
    “To the capital. Did we not agree last night that you wish to go there, that Cul Escio conceives it as his duty to take you, and that I am to translate?”
    “But not walk! We can go in my ship, of course.”
    “Ah, you call it a ‘ship,’ not an ‘egg,’ ” Aveo said.
    That was what the translator had decided to call it. For a brief moment Cam felt adrift; she didn’t understand the sounds she mouthed, and it was really the Atoners, through their translator, that were in control here. Then the unpleasant sensation passed. She possessed the translator, and the shuttle, and her personal shield, and no one on Kular could force her to do or go or be anything she didn’t choose.
    Aveo, looking patient, said, “The ‘ship’ would, I think, frighten the king.”
    “Frighten him? Why?”
    Aveo said, “He does not possess such a miracle himself.”
    Of course not. Cam had the impression that Aveo was saying much more than his actual words. She had that impression a lot, and she didn’t like it because it made her feel stupid. He was a difficult old man.
    Aveo struggled to pull himself off the pallet. Cam saw the flailing movements of his thin body and pushed away pity. This was not some pathetic old geezer in a nursing home. Aveo was smart, wily, and patient. She had learned that much last night, as he taught her to play kulith.
    He said, “We cannot go in your ship. It’s impossible.”
    “Why?”
    “Many reasons.” He reached for his bowl eagerly, like a man who hadn’t eaten well in a long time. “First, Cul Escio will not travel without a heavily armed guard; we are at war. Second, I doubt he would set foot in your ship because he could not control what might happen there. Third, if that egg from the sky landed in the