The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  The Security Office was a black-and-gray space dominated by a large counter and a sergeant wearing a scowl.

  “Lieutenant Scott, reporting as ordered,” she said.

  “Take a seat, ma’am. The commander will be out in a minute.”

  Jodenny sat on a long gray bench. One minute turned into two and three and four as she sat with nothing interesting to do but stare at the deck, the counter, or the overhead. She checked her imail but didn’t have the heart to start tackling the junior sailor evaluations piling up in her queue. Wistfully she thought of her promotion party carrying on without her, and resolved to make Tossen regret this morning for months to come.

  She started to fidget, her stomach rumbled, and she longed for a big hot cup of anything filled with caffeine. Normally she drank only coffee but lately Jem had been drinking a special drink called horchata. Another ten minutes passed. Just as she was thinking about finding a vending machine, a hatch opened down the passageway and reprieve arrived in the shape of Commander Delaney, the Security Officer.

  Delaney was a tall woman, big in the shoulders, and though they’d been at functions together Jodenny had never spoken to her one-on-one. She looked like she hadn’t had any sleep at all. Tossen really must have gotten himself in trouble this time to require attention from Delaney herself.

  “Lieutenant Scott, come on back,” Delaney said.

  They went down the passageway to a large conference room. Inside were two guards, a med tech, and some officers Jodenny didn’t know. At the table were a teenage boy, a younger girl, and a man with his head pillowed on his left arm. No one looked very happy, but the girl and boy perked up instantly when they saw Jodenny.

  “Nana!” The girl rose from her seat.

  Jodenny recoiled. She inadvertently brushed up against a tall lieutenant commander.

  He said, rather casually, “She called me Grandpa.”

  “Twig, sit.” The man lifted his head and tugged the girl back into her chair. “She doesn’t know you. Neither of them do.”

  “What kind of joke is this?” Jodenny demanded.

  Commander Delaney shook her head. “Stowaways. With a most unusual story, though, including some rather tall tales about you and Lieutenant Commander Osherman here.”

  “We’re not stowaways.” The teenage boy stared defiantly at Jodenny. “I’m Kyle and this is Twig. You’re our grandmother. This is Terry Myell. He’s your husband, or at least he’s going to be.”

  Osherman asked, “Then how am I your grandfather?”

  Twig said, “You’re going to be her husband, too.”

  Osherman made a faint noise of protest. Jodenny wanted to protest as well.

  Delaney said, “According to Core, Sergeant Myell here is an active duty sailor stationed on the Okeechobee. But his dog tag lists his rank as a chief, with Lieutenant Commander Jodenny Scott as his legal spouse, and the most recent entries are dated three years from now.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you. We’re time travelers,” Myell said wearily. He gave Jodenny the quickest of glances, as if it were painful to see her. “Any chance of getting some coffee?”

  Myell had woken up just a few hours ago, relieved.

  He was accustomed to waking up in unusual situations, often in darkness, far too often in some kind of danger. This new place was indeed dark, but also quiet and soothing. The air wasn’t too warm or too cold. It smelled faintly like machinery. The background hum of a spaceship, perhaps. The floor beneath him felt like a metallic deck, and when he blinked his eyes open he saw conduits and ducts. Definitely a ship, then. He liked that. He might be able to blend in, steal some food, maybe grab a change of clothes.

  He stood up, wincing at the ache in his back. Whatever the Roon had hit him with, it wasn’t nice. As he straightened, he nearly hit his head. The overhead was low and busy with ducts.

  Then he realized he wasn’t alone, and bumped his head anyway.

  “Where are we?” Kyle asked from where he was sitting against the bulkhead.

  Twig, huddled beside him, was crying. “I want my mom.”

  “What are you two doing here?” Myell asked, sounding stupid even to himself.

  Kyle pulled himself up. He was short enough that the pipes ran harmlessly over his head. “Are we on a ship?”

  Neither of them had ever been on a spaceship, of course. They might have seen pictures or records, especially of the Kamchatka, but their experience was the forest and beach, and running barefoot through Providence.

  “How did you get here?” he asked, still confused.

  “There was a flash of light,” Kyle said. “What did you do? Where’s home?”

  “I don’t know.” As soon as the words were out, Myell knew he had made a mistake. He was the adult here, a grandfather even if his first child hadn’t been born yet. He had a responsibility to be confident and parental so the children wouldn’t panic.

  Too bad he was the one already panicking. Homer had never told him he could take anyone with him through the blue ouroboros. He had no idea how that worked. Or how to get them back where they belonged.

  Twig hugged her knees close. “I want my mom.”

  “All right, look.” Myell crouched down beside them. “We’re on a Team Space ship. If we wait long enough, the blue ring will come and take us away. But you’ve got to stick by me, got it? All the time.”

  Kyle demanded, “What about the Roon? Is it here, too?”

  “I don’t think so,” Myell said. “I never saw it before, and there’s no reason to believe it can follow us. Anyone asks, you stay quiet. Leave it to me to handle.”

  Twig squinted at him. “Why? They’re dangerous!”

  Kyle said, “How do we know you can handle it?”

  “Because I’ve got a lot more experience than you,” Myell said. “And if we are where I think we are, they’re not going to believe you anyway. The people here don’t know anything about the Roon yet.”

  And he gave them that little speech just in time, too, because five minutes later two security techs showed up, alerted by remote sensors to trespassers in the T6 cargo hold. Myell was dismayed to see Yangtze patches on their sleeves. The Yangtze was a doomed ship, fated to explode off Kookaburra. If the kids noticed the patches or recognized their significance, they didn’t say. Myell tried to convince the guards that they were colonists who had gotten lost, but they didn’t have any ship identification cards.

  It also didn’t help when one of the security techs ran his gib near Myell’s collarbone and picked up on his dog tag.

  “Says you’re Chief Teren Myell of the Supply Corps,” the tech said. He gave Myell’s worn clothes another lookover. “You don’t look like a chief.”

  Myell said, “I’m not. Your machine’s wrong.”

  One of the techs turned to Kyle. “Is this really your father, kid?”

  Myell hoped Kyle would be less than forthcoming, but Kyle said, “Actually, he’s my sort of grandfather.”

  “Uncle,” Myell corrected. “Uncle Terry, that’s me.”

  The tech raised his eyebrow.

  The techs decided to bring them back to Mainship to sort everything out. The five of them took the lift up to the access ring and crossed over to the Rocks. The long promenade of shops and restaurants was empty of people, and the sky on the overhead vid was just beginning to brighten with sunrise. They boarded the first car of an arriving tram and Kyle, obviously awestruck, pressed his forehead to the nearest window as they crossed the umbilical shaft to Mainship.

  Twig wasn’t as impressed. She was quiet and wide-eyed, and clung to Myell’s side. He supposed getting caught by Security didn’t really matter. The three of them would get fed and quartered until the ouroboros showed up. He thought he’d understood the rules of the ring, how it was determined to fling him around the universe willy-nilly and alone. Maybe he understood nothing at all.

  “Is Lieutenant Scott on duty?” he asked one of the techs.

  “Why do you ask?”

&nb
sp; “She’s my division officer. And my wife.”

  The first tech cracked a smile. “I think you’re drunk, Chief.”

  “I wish,” he said. “Could you call her, please? She needs to know.”

  And he needed to know she was alive.

  But the tech didn’t call Jodenny. Myell refrained from wrestling the gib out of his hands and doing it himself. There was time, he told himself, finding no amusement in the thought. The techs took them to the Security office and put them in a conference room. An ensign showed up to ask questions, followed by a lieutenant, followed eventually by Commander Delaney. Myell decided to be as honest as possible.

  “We’re from the future, we travel in time, this is my granddaughter Twig, this is my wife’s grandson Kyle, can you call her? And Commander Sam Osherman, too. He’s Kyle’s grandfather.”

  Osherman arrived, looking impossibly young, followed soon by Jodenny, whose loveliness hit Myell in the gut all over again. Alive, young, disbelieving. Good for her. Skepticism was a healthy trait in a junior officer. He told them all that they wouldn’t remember any of this later, and of course they didn’t believe that, either.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Commander Delaney finally said. “The children will be put in temporary foster care. Sergeant Myell, you’re obviously AWOL from your current duty station. I don’t know why you falsified the personal information on your dog tag, or what you hope to gain from this charade, but maybe a stay in the brig will convince you how serious this prank of yours is.”

  “The brig!” Myell said.

  Twig latched on to Myell’s arm. “No! We’re not going anywhere.”

  Delaney said, calmly, “I’m afraid we don’t have much choice. It’ll take a while for us to analyze the DNA samples you provided. Do you have some other kind of proof to support your story, Sergeant?”

  The bit about the samples was crap, of course. The results would be back almost immediately as long as they had the right equipment. Myell could tell them about the disaster down the road, the lives that would be destroyed when the Yangtze was lost, but that wasn’t proof. He could tell them who would win the historic soccer match between Dunredding and Boomerang Moon, but that was another six months away. No one on this ship could verify the classified information he knew about the Wondjina Transportation System.

  Aside from spilling intimate details about Jodenny, his only recourse was revealing information about someone else.

  Myell said, “I’ll talk to Commander Osherman. Just the two of us.”

  Delaney said, “Why?”

  “Alone, please,” Myell said.

  Osherman nodded.

  The kids stayed with Jodenny and the other officers while Myell and Osherman were led to a separate room. Myell was acutely aware of the overhead camera watching them.

  He said, “If I were you, I’d ask them to stop recording.”

  “Why’s that?” Osherman asked.

  “Because I know your background, Commander. I’ve met you in the future on the Aral Sea, and I’ve met you even further in the future when you’re marrying my wife, and I’ve met you when you’re eighty years old and hate my guts. But right now, right here, I know all about your current duty assignment, and I don’t mean the Data Department.”

  Osherman gave him a steady look. Myell didn’t fidget or flinch. After a moment’s consideration. Osherman left the room. While he was gone Myell rested his head on his arms again and counted to a hundred. The hum of the ship was strangely comforting, even if the whole vessel was doomed. Osherman returned a few minutes later and sat across from him.

  “Go ahead, Sergeant,” he said. “I’ll give you five minutes.”

  “You’ll give me more than that, sir. You work for the Inspector General office. You were stationed here undercover to investigate a smuggling ring, and that smuggling ring extends not only through the Supply and Data Department on this ship but on a dozen others.”

  Osherman’s expression was inscrutable. “You don’t say.”

  Myell kept going. “The point is that I won’t say, not as long as you keep me out of the brig. I want temporary quarters with the kids. Keep us together, and you can ask all the questions you want.”

  “And you’ll answer them?”

  “I’ll answer what I can,” Myell said. “But I won’t embarrass Jodenny.”

  “Tell me more about the smugglers.”

  “How do I know you won’t throw me in the brig anyway?”

  “Because you know me,” Osherman said. “Or so you say.”

  “I knew you once,” Myell replied. “We weren’t exactly friends.”

  “I’m not worried about being your friend, Sergeant Myell.”

  On that, at least, they had something in common.

  A half hour later, Myell was reunited with Kyle and Twig in temporary quarters on C-deck. The quarters weren’t anything more than two cabins and a lounge, but it was better accommodations than the brig. Commander Delaney had restricted them there under guard, with techs stationed both inside and outside of the hatch.

  They had twenty hours or so before the ouroboros arrived.

  And maybe the Flying Doctor, too.

  “You believe this crazy story?” Jem asked.

  Jodenny shrugged. They were in Jem’s office in the Supply Flats, which were on minimal staffing because of Sunday schedule. Jodenny was standing at a window overlooking loading dock G. Down below, DNGOs loaded and unloaded smart crates for distribution throughout Mainship.

  “I don’t know,” Jodenny said truthfully.

  “So they’re traveling in time, and we’re just some temporary bubble that’s going to pop when they leave. We’re not even going to remember they’ve been here. Is that it?”

  “So he claims.”

  “Very convenient. What did Medical say?”

  “We’re still waiting.”

  Jem kicked back in his chair. “It’s not your everyday wild story. But if it’s true, ask him where to invest money. What sports to bet on. You know, useful things.”

  “It doesn’t make sense that he’d leave the Okeechobee to go AWOL here,” she said. “Besides which, they’re four months behind us in the Alcheringa. How could he possibly have gotten onboard? And his dog tag? Why fake something like that?”

  Jem picked up a genuine-leather, antique baseball from his desk. “Maybe he’s just a stalker.”

  “You’re not helping,” she said.

  “And you’re getting too involved.”

  She turned from the window. “How can I not get involved if he’s my future husband and those are my future grandkids?”

  Jem tossed her the ball. “Just don’t get all wrapped up in it. You always root for the underdog, which is great. But it’s going to turn you prematurely gray, too. Instead of worrying about it, freshly minted lieutenant of mine, why don’t you sit down and take a swing at these personnel evaluations? They’re due tomorrow and we’re only halfway through.”

  She tried to concentrate on the evaluations but in the quiet of the office she kept remembering the timbre of Myell’s voice, and the look in his eyes when he gazed at her. When Medical called, it was almost a relief. Almost.

  “You’re sure?” she asked Dr. Coates twice.

  “I’m forwarding the results to your queue, Lieutenant. You can see the sequence matches yourself.”

  Jodenny stared at the report for several long moments. Jem came to peer over her shoulder.

  “Well, then,” he said. “Congratulations. You’re a grandma.”

  “I think I need a drink,” she said.

  “Just ignore it. Go back to your cabin, get some rest. We woke you up pretty early this morning. Come to dinner in the wardroom and I’ll buy you a beer or two.”

  “Sure,” she said, and closed down the DNA report.

  She did go back to her cabin. Dyanne had gone off to get lunch, but Jodenny wasn’t hungry. Instead she scrolled through her queue, made a halfhearted attempt on the evals for AT Harrison, who
was a great performer, and AT Grant, smart but a troublemaker. After several minutes of rewriting the same paragraph over and over, she tried accessing Myell’s performance records. She didn’t have the clearance in Core.

  With Osherman she had more luck.

  “His public biography is on file in Core,” Jodenny’s agent replied, when queried. “Would you like me to display it?”

  “Read it to me.” She sat back on her bunk with her eyes closed as the computer recited Osherman’s commissioning date, his ship assignments, his awards. His career so far was solid but unspectacular. Nothing she heard especially intrigued her. Like Jodenny, he was an academy graduate. Myell, on the other hand, would have started at the very bottom of the enlisted ranks and worked his way up. She pictured both of them in her mind. Osherman, tall and sandy-haired, dry and wry with his Kiwi accent. Myell, younger and more serious, with an intense gaze and something he was hiding. Time traveler.

  Her future husbands, if Myell and the kids were to be believed.

  Sitting in her cabin wasn’t going to get her any more answers.

  Up on C-deck, she found two security techs guarding the temporary quarters where Myell and the kids had been billeted. One of the techs checked her name against his access list and then let her in. Inside was a small lounge filled with comfortable furniture and a vidscreen. A kitchenette with a table and chairs was off to one side. A young tech was sprawled on the floor in front of the vid, teaching the kids how to play Izim.

  “Is this how you stand watch?” Jodenny asked him sternly.

  The tech stood hastily. “Sorry, ma’am!”

  “At ease. Where’s Sergeant Myell?”

  Twig frowned. “He’s a chief.”

  “Not yet, dummy,” Kyle said.

  “Stop calling me dummy!”

  The security tech nodded toward one of the bedrooms. “He’s back there, ma’am. With Commander Osherman, Commander Delaney, and some people from the Data Department. They’re not supposed to be disturbed.”