And All the Stars

by Andrea K Höst

  "I'm surprised this isn't already widely known," Madeleine said. "Though – I guess I'd..." She paused, considering how she'd instinctively wanted to hide simply the amount of her stain. "What are you going to do?"

  Nash hesitated. "It makes most sense to be proactive, to clearly describe the situation and pre-empt any...less calm announcement. We've held back to gauge the environment at Rushcutters."

  Now that most of the Greens were up and having opinions. If Madeleine was a Green, she'd probably have an opinion about Nash too. But then there was Tyler.

  "Noi and I should be able to support my cousin," she said. "Though I guess he's already managing. We've been working on the relocating plan, in case things get weird, and have keys to enough boats to stage a carnival. Is it okay if I tell her?"

  They agreed to that, and left her considering the sketch she'd just completed: Shaun and Nash watching Pan. Would Tyler and Nash be able to feed off normal humans as well, or only Blues and Greens? Would all Blues be seen as dangerous monsters, either destructive or life-stealing?

  Before long a car arrived carrying five Blues in their early twenties. More people drifted in while these were running through their tests, a trickle which became a stream, until there were hundreds, Blues and Greens, far more than anyone had expected. Someone had brought a portable stereo, there were picnic baskets, umbrellas. As the day warmed, a handful went east of the lifeguard tower to swim. Then Pan discovered that he could use a partial force field to launch himself into the air, and immediately after frantically found a way to slow his fall with another, splashing down into the surf in a minor explosion of spray.

  Madeleine drew. Faces full of excitement, strain, hilarity, irritation, hope, suspicion. People who clumped together, never straying too far from their particular friends. Those who sat apart. The group around Fisher, Shaun and Nash, pontificating at each other. The handful who had decided to jump off the walkway and force shield bomb the sand, and the group who went to lecture them.

  Among the small sea of strangers Madeleine spotted Finger Wharf residents, and stopped sketching to talk to Asha, and to meet Mrs Jabbour.

  "It is the feeling of taking a positive step," Mrs Jabbour explained, gazing fondly at her husband and daughter as they prepared to test. "Even though we saw that you had more than enough participants, we still wanted to come, to take part."

  "Saw?"

  With a smile, Mrs Jabbour nodded at the railing above and behind them. "The special news broadcast. Did you not know?"

  Madeleine looked, and saw two women with a professional-weight camera. Wincing, she turned away.

  "We will be leaving, early tomorrow," Mrs Jabbour went on. "To the house of a cousin on the South Coast. If you and your friends wish to join us, you would be welcome."

  "Aren't the roads still closed?"

  "The main roads perhaps. We will find a way."

  The idea of just getting out of Sydney was tempting, but Madeleine didn't want to go too far from her parents, and explained their situation.

  "You, too, have been blessed then." Mrs Jabbour held out her hands as Faliha came bouncing up, glorying in the length of her punch. "Cherish that gift."

  Like Madeleine, the Jabbours were rare in not having lost anyone from the very core of their little family. Even Madeleine's grandparents were fine, off up in Armidale.

  Reminded of Noi, Madeleine looked about and couldn't spot her. Tucking her sketchbook into her shoulder bag, she climbed the stairs and wandered across to the Bondi Pavilion, a low, square building with galleries and a gelato shop, lockers and showers. No sign of Noi, no response to her tentative call in the toilets.

  Not quite concerned, Madeleine headed back toward the beach and stood at the top of the flat series of stairs to the left of the lifeguard tower. Bondi Beach was enormous, large enough for ten thousand, let alone the few hundred clustered around its centre. Noi shouldn't be hard to find.

  Far to her left an isolated figure in a sunhat was standing at the very eastern end of the beach. Noi. Madeleine headed in her direction, and Noi must have seen her, starting back.

  "I think they're about through," Madeleine said, when she reached the older girl. "The flow of new arrivals has slowed, at any rate. Did you know it's being broadcast?"

  "Yeah. Casey and Djella, ABC Sydney's newest – and only – roving reporters. One of them was a sound editor, and the other some kind of junior-league production assistant. They knew a heap of interesting goss. You know the home billeting thing being set up – people volunteering to take in some of the city outflow? Blues and Greens are going to be specifically excluded, no matter what the science types say about there being no sign of person to person transmission. And they want to collect any Blues and Greens who are already outside the city, and not let them stay with uninfected people. Even their own families that they've been staying with for the past week without any sign of passing this on."

  "I guess it's too early to be entirely certain we won't start spewing out dust," Madeleine said, far from pleased. "It's only going to get worse when they know there's two types of Blues." She explained briefly about Tyler and Nash.

  "Is that what's going on with Nash?" Noi produced a low, appreciative whistle. "Just what we didn't need. Damn, I was already looking forward to meeting your cousin. This makes him twice as interesting! Think I can talk him into biting me?"

  Madeleine gave Noi a wary look, and realised she was being teased.

  "People really did give you a rough time for having Tyler Vaughn as a cousin, huh?" Noi said. "I would have thought they'd be queuing up to ask you to wangle an autograph."

  "Some did. But at that point I hadn't seen Tyler for six years. We knew he'd come back to Australia, and then we spotted him guest-starring on Blood Mirror. It wasn't until they asked him to come back as a rival love interest, and that whole 'you realise I'm physically male' story was released that most people back home even recognised him. School got very strange after that."

  She rubbed her forearm, still able to find a slight lump.

  "It wasn't the people objecting to the way he dressed who were my main problem. All his new Biggest Fans were angry at me for not producing him for some kind of show-and-tell session, and then decided to be offended that I didn't refer to him as 'she'."

  "'Tyler is Tyler'," Noi murmured, repeating what had become his fan club's catchcry.

  "Yeah, this was before he gave that interview about labels, and what he identified as. I got trapped in an argument with a bunch of girls about me not being sensitive or respectful enough and, well, we were at the top of a flight of stairs. I ended up with a broken arm, Mum took me out of school for what was left of the year, and we moved to Sydney."

  The two people in school she'd thought her closest friends had been in that group. None of it had been strictly intentional; it had all just escalated into stupidity. At her new school she'd almost gone out of her way to cultivate a stuck up bitch reputation, and had maintained total disinterest in socialising right up until she met Noi's Devonshire tea.

  For someone who had been so convinced friends weren't worth it, Madeleine was aware of spending more and more time worrying about Noi. She wanted to find ways to make it easier for her, to relieve the hurt beneath her surface good humour. It was an impulse born of more than just a practical need for allies, or a change in herself to fit a new world. There were some people that you were just meant to be friends with.

  "Will you tell me about your family?" she asked tentatively, and saw immediately that it was too soon, adding: "Some time?"

  Noi had turned her head so the sun hat hid her face, but she nodded, and increased her pace, weaving through the clusters of people sitting on the east side of the lifeguard tower.

  "Here you are!"

  It was Emily, fine blonde hair tumbling out of its topknot, face strained, a waver in her voice.

  "What's up?" Noi sounded startled. "Did something happen?"

  "No, I –" The girl stopped in front of them, sudd
enly shamefaced. "I just didn't know where you were. I'm sorry."

  Noi paused, expression quizzical, then her wry smile bloomed. "Don't worry so much. We're not going to run off and leave you. You must have seen that the car's still here."

  Patches of red blotched Emily's fine skin, and she told them again she was sorry. "I just kept – I keep thinking I see those guys, and then it isn't them. The thing is, I could have blown holes in windows just as easily as them. I could have blown holes in walls. But all I did was what they told me, and wish I could get away, and I don't know if I could ever have stood up to them the way you did, and I feel so stupid and so angry and I just want to hit things."

  "Millie the Mauler," Noi said, and tugged a lock of Emily's hair. "Don't forget I'm technically the responsible adult around here. I've had more time to practice dealing with dickheads. You're, what, fifteen?"

  "Thirteen."

  "What?! You are not allowed to be thirteen and taller than me! Between you and Maddie I'm going to get a complex. But even with your unnatural stalkiness, I've still got your back. And you and Maddie have got mine, okay? We're the Three Musketeers – except without swordfights. We can be dashing, and...y'know, I have absolutely no idea what the Three Musketeers did, except it involved swordfights. And hats with feathers."

  "The Blue Musketeers. We can rescue people."

  Emily took Noi's hand and gave her a look of such unbounded admiration that Madeleine, a step behind them, was struck with an urgent need to get them home so she could paint them.

  "Weren't muskets guns?" Noi continued. "Why swordfights?"

  Madeleine was about to suggest heading off for an artistic interlude when a woman sitting on the sand a short way ahead glanced in their direction, gaped, and sprang to her feet. She was pointing above and behind them, so of course they stopped and turned, and saw a pale ball of light dropping out of the sky toward them.

  A falling star.

  Chapter Eight

  "Back up," Noi ordered, gripping Emily and Madeleine's arms and drawing them toward the edge of the surf as the watermelon-sized ball slowed to a stop about ten feet above the sand.

  All those immediately around the light moved similarly, though others came forward, until there was a large circle of people south-east of the lifeguard tower. Some kept going till they were well distant, and Madeleine spotted the Jabbours pausing near the ramp off the beach, and thought it strange that no-one outright left. They'd surely all seen enough movies where the alien arrives and starts disintegrating the people not sensible enough to run.

  Yet she, too, stayed and waited because she wanted to know.

  Pan hurried up behind them, and poked his head between Noi and Madeleine. "Is it singing?"

  "I've heard that before," Madeleine said, frowning. "A couple of times."

  "It's like an out of tune radio."

  "A theremin," Nash said, leading Gavin and Shaun to stand with them at the edge of the surf. "Or very like."

  "Shit, is this thing just some kind of speaker? We come from beyond the stars: it's time for a concert?" Pan started forward, but Nash snagged the back of his shirt and pulled him to a standstill.

  "Where's Fish?" Shaun asked, looking about. "He'd hate to miss this."

  Nash pointed to Fisher and Nick in the lifeguard tower, watching through the glass. "That makes a good vantage. Let's relocate. Move slowly, so we do not draw its attention."

  "But I want to draw–" Pan began, and broke off.

  The glowing ball of light was changing shape.

  Triangular strips opened out like the petals of an unsymmetrical flower. The shortest triangle pointed up, while two of equal length stretched left and right, with the longest unfurling downward until the ball had become a different form of star, four-pointed, glimmering white. An uneven centre band of dark blue reminded Madeleine vaguely of the body of a butterfly, though it was not actually separate from the rest of the star, merely a concentration of colour which thinned out into a filigree lace of veins.

  "An angel!" someone shouted.

  Madeleine blinked, but she could see the connection. The central band of blue could almost be a narrow human outline, though one with feet which trailed to a point, and no arms, or arms crossed on the chest. The thing was shaped more like a kite than any angel, a fluidly rippling one without any rigid frame. The weird, oscillating noise came again, louder, and the star-kite moved, a lazy undulation only a foot or so forward, sparking an immediate backward scatter from its audience.

  "How are we going to know if it's saying 'take me to your leader'?" Pan asked.

  "I agree with Nash," Noi murmured. "Let's–"

  The star slid sideways, quick as a piece of paper caught by the wind, turned in a moment and settled across the shoulders of a bulky, sunburned guy, who tried and failed to dodge as it landed. For a moment it looked like a hooded cloak, then it sank out of sight.

  "The hell–?" Pan and Noi said in unison.

  The sunburned guy stood unmoving, face blank, as the crowd around him drew back. Then he blinked, looked sharply left and right, lifted one hand and closed it, opened it.

  "The noises are coming from him now!"

  The sunburned guy looked toward the woman who had shouted, and she flinched back, then firmed and asked angrily: "Why have you done this? What do you want from us?"

  "To–" The man paused, repeated the word, a stutter of sound, frowned then said clearly, in a distinct Western Sydney accent, "To stand still."

  "Stand...?"

  "Fuck."

  Pan pointed, the crowd turned. Then, as one, they ran.

  ooOoo

  The stars came from the east, dozens, hundreds, dropping out of the sky.

  Madeleine raced with Emily directly for the lifeguard tower stairs, but the cross-current of people before her was too thick, and she diverted left, angling for the nearest ramp off the sand. Almost a hundred metres from the shoreline, those who had wisely left early were already jamming onto it, others diverting again for the ramp further west. But Tyler's car was right near the head of the first ramp, and Madeleine took a frantic glance over her shoulder, trying to decide whether to forge into the press or just dash west, and keep running.

  The leading edge of stars were unfurling behind her, dropping down onto the shoulders of those slowest to move. And one, distinctly brighter, bluer than the rest, was so close, sliding unmistakably in her direction and she gasped and snatched at Emily's hand and darted left, giving up the ramp in preference for speed. But the things – kites, butterflies, angels – moved faster than any runner.

  The lightest touch, the breath of the sun.

  A response roared inside her, an instinctive outflow, and she found herself lifted off her feet, sailing forward to plough into the sand. Around her others had been similarly knocked down, and were struggling to their feet.

  "Shield!" Gavin shouted, staring back. "You can shield! Shield against them!"

  The very blue star which had been chasing Madeleine had curled partially closed and dropped close to the sand. The other stars were clustering toward it, filling the air with their oscillating song. Noi grabbed Emily up and took off, and Madeleine was about to follow when she saw Shaun. One of those she'd knocked down, he was lying unmoving to her left, Nash trying to rouse him.

  "Is he–?" With a frantic glance at the star cluster, she grabbed Shaun's arm and tried to lift.

  "I think shield paralysis," Nash said. "On two."

  With desperate energy they lifted, Nash doing most of the work until Gavin dashed back and helped.

  "Can you shield again when they come?" Nash asked, gasping with effort.

  "I don't know! I'll try!" Their speed carrying Shaun meant she would have to.

  But the stars swooped past them to settle on runners on the ramp. As each runner was embraced they stopped short, and the way was quickly becoming blocked.

  "Go back past the lifeguard tower," Gavin panted. "Up the wide stairs."

  It was longer to run, but Em
ily was already standing at the head of the lifeguard tower stair, signalling wildly and pointing east, so they dog-legged back. And the stars passed them.

  "They're avoiding us!" Gavin said.

  "They might be – tack left."

  People were running toward them, some moving slow and hesitant, but others picking up speed. Shaun's rigidity abruptly lapsed, and he groaned and flinched in their hold, sending them stumbling.

  "C'n r'n," he groaned, thrashing and gulping.

  Remembering the agonies of the pins and needles, Madeleine sincerely doubted it, but he surprised her, managing to at least make it easier for Gavin and Nash to haul him.

  Two women ahead were on an intercept course – they wouldn't make it past them.

  "Go straight through!" Nash ordered.

  Madeleine shuddered, but knew they couldn't risk the delay of a collision and held up one hand. Trying not to think of twisted metal, of tumbled cars, she pushed some of the energy inside her into a punch at the two women.

  Their shields were just visible, a protective glimmer which appeared as the punch struck them and sent one tumbling backward. The other was only knocked a little off course, spun onto her knees, but this was enough to get them past and in sight of the stairs. Emily was running along the level above, Fisher trailing behind her, and they met in a group and dashed up the next set of stairs to where Nick was waiting in the white hatchback, Pan and a couple of other boys already crammed into the back seat.

  "Noi's...coming..." Emily gasped, and clutched Madeleine, trying to catch her breath as Nash and Gavin helped Shaun into the car.

  "Go!" Nash told Nick. "Meet you at Rushies."

  "Keep moving," Gavin added, as Nick obediently tore off, narrowly missing a small van trying to get past.

  They ran all-out alongside the one-way road in front of Bondi Pavilion, and Madeleine's legs were jelly, rubber bands, not forgiving the energy cost of shields and punches, nor her general disinclination to run long distances. She was falling behind, her breath burning in her throat, but then there was a newly-familiar growl of expensive engine and she straight-out dived into the rear seat of Tyler's car as Noi slowed, then surged forward to collect the others, the car soon over-crammed with panting, gasping escapees.