The Outback Stars

CHAPTER


THIRTY-FIVE





I

don’t believe you,” Jodenny said. Osherman tossed broken twigs onto the fire. “For years scien-tists all over the Sisters had been trying to capture a ring from a Sphere so it could be studied. A trio of engineers on Kookaburra finally succeeded. Because of my Inspector General clearance, I was debriefed about the WTS and ordered to get it aboard the Yangtze without anyone finding out about it. A team of scientists came with us, as did the lead agent for that project. None of them thought it would be dangerous. No one thought it would try to activate.”



Jodenny searched her memory high and low, forced her mind back, back, back to the morning of the explosion. She had signed off on the duty log and turned her responsibilities over to Lieutenant Odell. Then she had gone to the mess decks and was enjoying a nice cup of horchata when the first alarms started to blare… Hadn’t she?



* * * *



J

odenny Scott, Assistant Division Officer for Underway Stores, glanced at the nearest clock on the Yangtze’s bridge and stifled a yawn. The overnight watch had been long and dull, and not even the prospect of the upcoming Alcheringa drop could fill her with excitement. Between now and then the only exciting thing worth contemplating was an icy cup of horchata with extra sugar. She had both hands wrapped around it when her relief showed up early.




“Couldn’t wait to start the day?” she asked Lieutenant Odell.



“It was either come in early or stay home and listen to the baby cry,”

Odell said, rubbing her eyes. “When the hell is someone going to find a cure for colic?”



Jodenny signed out at oh-six-hundred, sixty minutes before the ship transitioned into the Alcheringa. She swung by her cabin, picked up her gym bag, and headed back to F-Deck. A long tread-mill run soon had her feeling more alert. She showered, put on a fresh uniform, and was heading toward the lift when the comm clicked to life.



“Alcheringa drop commencing in twenty seconds,” she heard.

“Fifteen… ten…”



The blast of a horn drowned out the rest of the announcement. It sounded low and mournful, as if calling faraway warriors to a battle already lost, and made the hairs on Jodenny’s neck stand at attention. An emergency sensor lit up over the hatch to Science Lab B, and the General Quarters klaxon began to shriek.



“Emergency in Tower 6,” the bridge announced. “Emergency Ser-vices responding. Hull breach in Mainship, Deck F. All crew and pas-sengers to lifepods.”



For a moment Jodenny stood rooted to the deck. T6 belonged to Jem and the Underway Stores Division. Maybe someone had collided with a DNGO, or a hazardous material smartcrate had broken open. But a hull breach, here, on Deck F? Impossible—



“Lieutenant,” her agent said, “you should evacuate to your life-pod.”



“I will, Katherine,” Jodenny said, just as the hatch to Lab B burst inward. A civilian scientist stumbled out of the room and grabbed her by the arms.



“It’s not supposed to work!” he gasped. “We didn’t mean for it to—”



Jodenny pushed into the lab to see if anyone needed her help. Sucking wind dragged at her, and she clutched at a fixed table in or-der to keep from being dragged toward a large hole in the stern bulk-head. An enormous chunk of parasteel had somehow evaporated. The lab was located in the ship’s interior, but the bulkheads beyond it also appeared breached, and the emergency clearshields weren’t holding well. Severed conduits and vents hissed smoke and sparks, and a live power line had two men trapped on the other side of the room. Between Jodenny and the trapped men were pieces of a metal sculpture that had been arranged on the deck. Hanging high over the pieces was a shimmering, yellow-white hologram in the shape of an ouroboros.



“Jodenny!” a voice shouted, and for the first time she realized one of the trapped men was Sam Osherman. She hadn’t seen him since they’d broken up a month earlier, though she’d cursed his name daily. He yelled,

“Jo, get out!”



The call of a horn filled the room again.



“It pierced the ship,” said the scientist. “Jesus Christ, it sliced right through the hull—”



“Jo, leave now!” Osherman said. He dragged the scientist forward so that they were standing in the middle of the ring. The ouroboros over their head glowed brightly. “Get out!”



Jodenny retreated a step or two but she couldn’t just leave him there, the bastard. “I’ll get help!” she yelled, just as a flare of yellow light blinded her. She tumbled backward, trying to shield her eyes, but the world was full of light, bright light, hot light boiling away her skin, and when she opened her eyes Osherman and the scientist were gone. The disaster had already begun, and the Yangtze was doomed.



* * * *



S

he pulled herself clear of Myell’s arms and took several unsteady steps away from both men. “What happened after that? Did I really rescue anyone? Earn that goddamned MacBride Cross?”



“Of course!” Osherman looked appalled that she doubted it. “You got out of the lab and started for your lifepod. Everything that hap-pened after that, the people you saved and the injuries you sustained, is true. The block was just a little part of your treatment afterward. It’s supposed to be an improved version, with not so many side ef-fects. But it didn’t take too well with you.”



Jodenny didn’t believe him. He had been her lover, once, but then had stood aside and let them tamper with her memory to the point where she picked up pieces of broken glass and pressed them to her veins. The treachery of it all, from Osherman to her doctors to the admirals of Team Space, made her feel brittle inside, ready to snap into pieces. She couldn’t bear to look at Myell, a man whose mother had killed herself. Her suicide attempt was the one thing she had never wanted him to know about.



“You used the ring to escape,” Myell said to Osherman. “You left the ship.”



“Yes,” Osherman said. “It was only six stops until the Point Elliot Spheres. A picnic, compared to this trip.”



She couldn’t bear to listen anymore. Jodenny walked away blindly, the trees blurred in her vision, her movements jerky and stiff. When tears ran down her face she wiped them off with her sleeve and kept going.



“Jodenny! Kay!”



Myell caught up to her but she shrugged off his hand and said, “I’m fine.”



“You’re not fine,” he said. “Who could be?”



He pulled her into his embrace. Jodenny fought with a few thumps of fists against his chest but the punches were perfunctory, and he didn’t let go. Her knees gave way. They both sank to the ground as sobs tore out of her.



“I’m sorry,” she said when she could speak.



“Sorry for what? None of this is your fault.”



“What I did to myself… what your mother did.” Her face was hot with shame. “I didn’t want you to know.”



Myell’s expression was fierce. “What happened to you and what happened to my mother are two entirely different things. Never com-pare them. Never blame yourself.”



His lips found hers in a hard, determined kiss. Jodenny let him cra-dle her to the ground, where he nuzzled against her cheek and whis-pered in her ear and told her everything would end well. But her fear wasn’t so easily assuaged. She cupped his strong, stubbled face and said, “What if they try to block this from us? What if we get back and they do it again?”



“They won’t,” Myell promised, and pressed his weight against her until the forest and trees and sky disappeared, and the only real things were their two bodies. “We’ll die before we let them do that to us.”



* * * *



Y

ellow light. Pushing, pushing, pushing them onward. Jodenny made it through the next few stops without too many ill effects but Chiba and Myell both started to suffer terribly. Twelve stations after leaving Warramala they landed in a Sphere with a broken dome, and in the cast of sunlight Chiba went into convulsions. Myell’s eyes were only half open, his skin cold and clammy to Jodenny’s touch. “We have to stop,” Jodenny told Osherman.



The station consisted of three Mother Spheres and a Child set in a thick rain forest. Jodenny fought ferns, vines, and slippery moss until she got Myell to a small clearing under the auspices of an enormous red cedar tree. Birds flitted overhead. Parrots and cockatoos and pi-geons, mainly, with some exotic species as well, all the colors of the rainbow. The temperature was mild enough but the ground was damp with recent rain and it took Jodenny several minutes to get a campfire going. She settled Myell close to the flames. He was unre-sponsive to her cajoling, but that didn’t stop her from talking to him.




“Remember,” she said into his ear. “We have a dinner date. I al-ready know what I’m going to wear, and you can bet it’s not a uni-form. What about you? That sweater you wore at your brother’s house—that was nice. Do you still have it?”



It was ridiculous discussing wardrobe choices when their clothes were millions of light-years away, but she didn’t have much to say about the weather and gossip about Underway Stores was in short supply. She would have happily traded all her current problems for the challenge of keeping Lange from playing Izim.



“If we get back to Mary River,” she said, “we can go visit Colby and Dottie, and they’ll put us up in that nice guest room. All night long I waited for you, but did you come visit? No.”



His trembling eased, and he might have slept. When Osherman joined them several minutes later he had an armful of mushrooms, macadamia nuts, and mangoes. “Some of these look harmless enough,”

he said. “Not so sure about the mushrooms. I suspect a lot of things around here are poisonous.”



Jodenny said, “Sam, we can’t do one hundred and forty-something more stations.”



“We don’t have a choice.” Osherman put down the food. “Unless you intend to make your home here for the rest of your days and wait for a rescue that might never come.”



Jodenny tightened her hold on Myell. “How’s Chiba?”



“Conscious and swearing up a storm. I left him tied up back there, near a waterfall. Give me the water bottle, and I’ll get some for all of us.”

Osherman glanced at Myell’s bone-white face. “Jodenny, I know how you feel. What about your career?”



“If it’s Terry or my career, there’s no contest.”



“There are other men in Team Space.”



She replied, “There are other jobs.”



* * * *



M

yell wasn’t sure where he was. The last thing he clearly remem-bered was the sound of Jodenny’s voice and a glimpse of bamboo trees by firelight. The landscape around him was now flat and parched, cracked open by drought, and the only sound was the whistle of the wind. The western horizon was gold with sunset, the rest of the sky purple. He thought that if he glanced down at himself he might see dark skin and dusty feet. An overwhelming sense of iso-lation swept through him. He was alone in this ancient land, aban-doned by all, consigned to a future bereft of friends or hope or even the tiniest drops of moisture. He would shrivel to nothing more than salt and bone and be scattered like the dust, unremembered, un-mourned.



A woman’s voice floated across the landscape, sweet like water.



“And that’s how the emu and the kangaroo changed skins,” she said.



“Tell me another, Mom,” said a young boy.



Myell turned around to see the farmhouse where he had grown up. The windows were gaping squares of rust-colored light, the tim-bers splintered by age. He could see shapes moving inside, indistinct, fluid. Himself and his mother in one room. His father, swaying drunkenly down the hall, saying, “Don’t tell him that crap, Adeline.” Silence, now. The creaking of a rope, as a heavy weight swayed from a rafter. Myell knew if he went to the door it would fall away beneath his hand and deliver him into the land of memory, where pain lived and thrived.



“No,” he said to whoever was listening. “I won’t go.”



“You don’t have to,” his mother said. She was standing right beside him now, her sun-colored hair pulled back from her fresh, dewy face. This was his mother not as she had died, worn and wasted and gray. This was his mother as she had stood on an Australian beach, a smile on her lips. She was not so tangible that he could reach over and touch her, but that didn’t stop him from trying.



“Terry,” she said. “Jungali.”



That was a name he hadn’t heard since her death. Jungali, she would say, and kiss his nose. My little Jungali, she would sing, as she poured water over his head in the tub. His special name, she said. His father never used it. His mother never mentioned it in front of Colby or Daris. Perhaps they had their own names, or perhaps he was the only one so favored. Before he could ask, his mother dissolved like dust in a storm. All the gray particles of her being reassembled into the shape of the Wirrinun.



“Choose,” he said, and slammed his staff into the ground. The Rainbow Serpent burst from the ground and swallowed the Wirri-nun whole. It swayed before Myell’s eyes, lifted its alligator head to the height of Myell’s head, and repeated, “Choose.”



“I don’t understand,” Myell said. “What am I choosing between? Are you the Wondjina? Where are we?”



“Older than the Wondjina,” the snake insisted. “Wiser.”



Lightning sheeted across the sky, followed by bellows of thunder. Myell had never conversed with a snake before and preferred to see his mother again, but he felt strangely calm in this place. He decided he was not dreaming in the normal fashion, nor was he anywhere that could be pinpointed by a map or star chart. He was in the great elsewhere older than Time itself.



The snake’s eyes widened as if it were pleased. “In the Dreamtime, yes. But will you stay?”



The sky split open. Rain flooded through him and carried him away to a land of rain forests and desert and seashore, and the dark-skinned natives who walked across its width and length with songs on their tongues, and the winged, furred, and scaly creatures who climbed out of the ground or descended from the trees to take part in the cycle of rain and drought that extended back to the eternal time of the Dreaming. Among the people and animals and trees he saw a dozen wirrinun, or maybe a hundred dozen, or a thousand dozen, all of them leading their people single file across the landscape. Each of them wore Myell’s own face. Each was named Jungali.



“No,” he said, and the land fell away to the flat landscape outside his parents’ farmhouse, which was nothing more than stone and shadow.



“The world you know as your own is itself but a shadow,” the Rainbow Serpent said, coiling its tail as if holding up a finger to test the wind.

“Surrender it and embrace the Dreaming. You will be well rewarded.”



Myell wanted to. His bones already felt like the rocks of the world, his blood like its rivers. It would be easy to surrender—to choose—the ancient power of the Dreamtime. To embrace what was his birthright. But then he thought of Jodenny. Of Colby and his family, of friends like Timrin and Gallivan and Chaplain Mow.



“No,” he said. “I choose Terry, not Jungali.”



“As you wish.” The snake twirled its way up toward the sky. Im-possibly high it rose, a sinewy ribbon climbing toward heaven. “Touch my skin.”



Another choice. Trust it, distrust it. Myell took one last glance around the dark landscape. He reached out and laid his hand flat against the shining colors.



“Jodenny,” he whispered, right before the snake took him up into the sky and down the Alcheringa, the great river between the stars.



* * * *



J

odenny meant to stay awake. The hunger pains in her stomach should have helped, but it had been a long day of keeping vigil over Myell. Once or twice he had murmured words she didn’t catch, but he had never woken. She tried rubbing her knuckles over his breast-bone, but he remained stubbornly unconscious.




“He’ll be all right,” Osherman had said, which angered her. He couldn’t know that. Couldn’t promise it.



When Jodenny finally fell asleep she dreamed of snakes and birds and vines closing in, choking her with their growth. She awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of insects and the rustlings of ani-mals in the brush. The air was heavy and wet. Osherman had pre-dicted rain before sunrise.



“Sam?” she asked. He was nowhere to be seen. Jodenny shook Myell’s shoulder, but he wouldn’t wake. She searched for the mazer and flashlight, but they too were gone. She lifted a burning branch from the fire and stepped past the choking ferns toward the waterfall where Osherman had left Chiba. The rain forest stirred all around her, palm fronds bowing in the breeze, lianas tugging at her trousers. A few drops of rain pelted her face and she heard a steady pattering, but the canopy overhead caught and collected most of it. She hoped the rain stayed off them. Myell would probably catch pneumonia if he got drenched. We don’t need, any more bad luck, she thought grumpily, and then a mazer shot zipped by her face so close that her nose began to tingle.



The bolt hit a massive cathedral fig tree instead, searing a hole right through it. The mazer was set to kill, then. Jodenny threw her makeshift torch to the side and dived to the ground, where she rolled behind a bush.



“Come on out, Lieutenant,” Chiba said, a snarl to his voice. He stood a few meters away with Osherman’s flashlight in hand, an easy target if only she had a mazer as well. “Let’s talk.”



Jodenny found a good-sized rock in the dirt and hurled it at him. A solid thump and Chiba’s yelp of pain let her know she’d hit her target. He dropped the light. Jodenny scrambled to her feet and tried to flee behind the fig tree, but faster than she could have imagined Chiba tackled her and drove her to the ground. She landed hard, his weight and strength nearly crushing her. Jodenny scratched and kicked and screamed, everything she’d ever learned in self-defense classes vanish-ing in near-panic.



“Always a bitch.” Chiba pinned her arms. “Not so high and mighty now—”



Jodenny squirmed one hand free and hooked her fingers into Chiba’s eyeballs. He yelped and fell away. She started to crawl again, but his hand clamped down on her ankle. Jodenny grabbed the near-est plant at hand, a stem with heart-shaped leaves. She ripped it out of the ground and whipped it around into Chiba’s face. He recoiled with a gasp.



“F*ck, what’s that?” he demanded.



Jodenny’s hand began to burn. She crawled away from Chiba any-way, putting as much distance between them as possible. He was still saying, “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck,” and now he was wheezing for air. Maybe he was allergic to whatever was in the plant. Cradling her hand, Jodenny picked up the flashlight and went in search of first the mazer and then Osherman. The mazer had rolled under some bushes. Osherman was curled up on the ground ten meters away, just beginning to wake up. He’d scraped open his scalp when he fell, and blood matted his head.



“Chiba,” he said when he could form a coherent word.



“He’s not going anywhere,” Jodenny said.



He insisted that they check. Chiba wasn’t where Jodenny had left him. They stumbled through the brush, trying to follow a trail of broken branches, and then the clear mournful call of an ouroboros cut through the air.



“F*ck,” Osherman said.



By the time they reached the Spheres, Chiba was gone. “He won’t get far,” Osherman said, which sounded a lot like wishful thinking. Jodenny thought he might plunge into a chase after him, but com-mon sense ruled and they went back to where they had left Myell.



He was still asleep, his face wan in the firelight. Jodenny used a piece of cloth and some of their water supply to wash and bandage Osherman’s head with her left hand.



“What’s wrong with your right hand?” he asked.



“Nothing,” she said, though it was swollen and red. She poured water over it, but the stinging didn’t ease.



Osherman shifted clumsily from his position and settled beside her. He was taller than Myell and had a different smell to him— blood, unfortunately, but also something spicy and strong, something that reminded her of the Yangtze.



“Go to sleep,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”



Her fingers were hot, but she otherwise felt cold. “You’ve got a head injury. Better we both stay up.”



He poked at the fire. “You know, back on the Yangtze—I don’t know if I told you this. My job was one thing. What happened with us—well, I shouldn’t have let it. I could have put you in grave danger.”



“Or maybe you just slept with me to find out if I knew anything about the smugglers?” None of it mattered, really. The Yangtze, Aral Sea, all of Team Space, were millions of miles away. Chiba was gone and Myell was perhaps dying and what was her honor, really? Why should she care?



“No,” Osherman said. “I didn’t just use you that way.”



“It would have been a logical tactic.”



“Jo, no,” he repeated, and touched her arm. “I didn’t want you in-volved.”



“I don’t believe you.”



“What if I told you that I was afraid Lieutenant Commander Ross’s influence would subvert you?”



She stared at him, all injuries and fatigue forgotten. “Jem had noth-ing to do with smuggling.”



Osherman’s expression was shuttered. “This isn’t the place to talk about it.”



“No,” Jodenny said. “You’ll never convince me.”



“Jo…”



Jodenny turned her back to him. Her hand still ached like a son of a bitch and fury kept her wide awake. To insinuate that Jem con-doned or participated in criminal activities was a new low for Osher-man. She closed her eyes against angry tears and when she opened them again, hours had passed. The fire was cold, Osherman sound asleep, and sunrise had started to lighten the edge of the sky with dark gold. Myell was standing nearby and staring at her with an odd expression on his face.



“Terry?” she asked.



He walked into the forest. Jodenny pulled herself up. Her hand was red in the sunlight, swollen, but it didn’t hurt as much as it had the night before. “Terry—” she called, but he moved so quickly that she lost track of him for several seconds. Then she saw him enter the Child Sphere and followed him into the gloom. Though she’d heard no horn, an ouroboros was waiting for them.



She touched Myell’s shoulder. “Terry?”



“I know where to go.” Myell bent down next to the ouroboros. “Two stops on this line, transfer over to a Father for one stop, transfer back, and we’ll be back on Warramala.”



Jodenny rubbed his shoulders. “Come on back to the fire. Let’s see if we can scrounge up some breakfast.”



“Do you believe me?” His gaze was earnest. “We’re four stops away. The Rainbow Serpent told me.”



Jodenny kept her opinion of talking snakes to herself. Myell was quiet on the walk back. She started the fire again, had him sit close to it, checked on Osherman, and went in search of water and food. For several minutes she soaked her stinging hand in a pool of water, and that seemed to help. When she returned Myell and Osherman were arguing.




“A dream means nothing, Sergeant. We’re staying with the Mother Sphere we know.”



“We’ll never make it.” Myell sounded entirely sure of himself.

“Humans were never meant to travel this way, Commander. It’s the Wondjina’s network, not ours.”



Osherman retorted, “I’d think twice about counting on the word of a talking snake.”



Jodenny stepped out of the trees. With forced cheer she said,

“Some mangoes here. Anyone hungry?”



Osherman asked, “Did the sergeant tell you about his dream?”



Jodenny met Myell’s serene gaze. “Yes.”



“And your opinion?”



She shrugged, still angry with him over the previous night’s con-versation about Jem. “Four stops sounds much more manageable.”



“What’s wrong with your hand?” Myell asked, noticing the way she was holding it.



“Some kind of plant. I grabbed it the wrong way”



Myell made a careful examination of her palm and fingers. “Prob-ably a stinging tree. Sometimes comes as a shrub. You’ll need a doc-tor to fix it properly.”



Osherman smothered the fire. “Then we’d better get moving again. Chiba’s got several hours on us, but he’ll be sick, maybe in-jured. He won’t be still traveling. We can catch him.”



Jodenny looked at Myell.



“Chiba doesn’t matter,” Myell said. “The snake will take care of him.”



“Sam, at least look at the ring in the Child Sphere,” Jodenny said.

“See if any of the glyphs match ones we’ve already passed through.”



“It’s probably gone already,” Osherman said. But when they got there, the ouroboros hadn’t moved on. After a moment’s inspection he said, “No. I don’t recognize any of these.”



“You don’t have to,” Myell said.



Osherman brushed dirt from his knees. “Jodenny, it’s crazy. You detour off here, and god only knows what corner of the galaxy you’ll wind up in.”



“I know the way home,” Myell said. In the glow of the flashlight she recognized the set of his jaw. “Do you trust me, Kay?”



Jodenny didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I just don’t trust your snake.”



Osherman spread his hands. “Jodenny, choose. Come with me and we’ll get home for sure. Go with him and you could be lost forever.”



Decide between the two of them, between crazy and safe, be-tween the proven path and the way of Myell’s Dreaming. Jodenny knew Osherman to be a methodical, intelligent man not prone to flights of fantasy, even if he was horribly wrong about Jem. She knew Myell was stubborn, reliable, and practical. She remembered that Osherman had more knowledge about the Wondjina network. She remembered the way Myell had sacrificed himself for her in T18.



“Jodenny,” Osherman said. “You’ll never get home if you go with him.”



“Maybe not.” Jodenny reached out and took Myell’s hand anyway.



* * * *



A

fter Osherman was gone, Jodenny buried herself in Myell’s arms and asked, “Are you sure about this?”



“Yes,” Myell said.



At the first stop she vomited. At the second stop they lurched out-side to a dimly lit world blanketed with sleet. A half-frozen creek barred their way to the Father Sphere a hundred meters away. They stomped across it, Jodenny’s feet aching with cold. Wind whipped at their thin clothes. When they reached the Father, they had to dig at ice-crusted snow with their bare hands to get under the arch. Jodenny’s hands and feet were numb by the time they reached the in-side, which was also freezing cold.



“We’re almost there,” Myell said, his teeth chattering.



A mistake. They had both made a mistake. She lay against him in the icy darkness, willing the end to come mercifully. She said, “Terry—”



“Don’t give up now,” he insisted.



The next stop was filled with warm sunlight from a jagged, charred breach in the Sphere’s side. Bones lay nearby, some of them burned and charred. They staggered back to a Child Sphere where the ground was covered with ash. Myell collapsed inside the ouroboros, his lips blue. Jodenny hammered at his chest.



“Goddamn it!” she yelled. “Wake up!”



He wasn’t breathing. She did it for him, sweat rolling down her back, her arms and shoulders aching from the strain of doing com-pressions. Four minutes. Five—



Yellow light.



She thought she heard the hiss of a snake, but it was simply Myell as he gasped for air. Jodenny began to cry.



“They’re back,” a man’s voice said, and a light nearly blinded her.

“Lieutenant Scott, Sergeant Myell, you’re both under arrest.”



* * * *