The Stars Blue Yonder

by Sandra McDonald

  The meeting, as such, was taking place under the metal roof of the town pub. A dozen people were drinking beer as Cappaletto regaled them with stories of the Roon mines and their escape from the Flying Doctor. By the time Myell reached them, his head pounding and borrowed clothes hastily thrown on, Cappaletto had almost finished the tale.

  “There he is,” Cappaletto said, raising his mug. “The man who took on the Roon and lived to tell the tale.”

  Baylou Owenstein said, “Man of the hour! Even if you are, you know, dead.”

  “Especially since you’re dead,” seventy-year-old Jodenny said, giving him a suspicious look.

  Teresa Romero, her feet propped up and hands laced across her small pregnant belly, said, “He doesn’t look very dead to me, Mom.”

  Myell took a cold mug and downed some of the beer. Everyone looked at him as if expecting him to speak, but when he opened his mouth a burp startled him and his audience both.

  “Good one,” Baylou said.

  Someone offered him a stool. Myell sat. He felt refreshingly light, surprisingly at ease. “What did you tell them?” he asked Cappaletto.

  Cappaletto passed his mug to get refilled. He was pale in the sunlight, thin from his captivity, but still cheerful. “Everything, of course.”

  Everything turned out to be the awful mines, yes, and the Flying Doctor and Anna Gayle for sure, though only Jodenny cared about Gayle. Cappaletto had also touched on the sad tale of the Roon ambush at Kultana, and the legends about Burringurrah and the Kamchatka from his perspective in the timeline.

  “What you’re talking about all happened twenty-five years or so ago,” Jodenny said, her gaze going briefly to the clouds. “Are you saying all of mankind has fallen under the Roon? That there’s nothing left?”

  The mood around the table shifted, darkened.

  “I don’t know,” Myell admitted. “It’s possible.”

  “Possible, my ass,” Cappaletto said. “I’m sure we’ve kicked their asses by now.”

  Silence as they grimly considered the possibilities.

  Baylou raised a toast. “Here’s to kicking their asses!”

  The beer ran freely all night long, and Myell didn’t remember much about stumbling off to bed at Lisa’s house. Cappaletto, who was bedding down at Sheriff Alice’s house, had disappeared an hour earlier. At breakfast, nursing his hangover, Myell was startled when Lisa casually said, “We’re having trouble deciding who you’re going to take with you.”

  Myell’s water glass paused halfway to his lips. “Sorry?”

  “Who you’re going to take,” Baylou repeated. He was sitting with his tree bark coffee, which Myell knew better than to taste. “With you. When the ring comes.”

  “I think Mom would like to go,” Lisa said. “She and Sam. I mean, it’s not the fairest thing that they’ve been stuck here all these years and won’t ever get to see the rest of the universe. But they’re also a bit old. Might slow you down.”

  Myell very carefully spread some butter on a roll. It tasted like cardboard in his mouth. “You understand that it doesn’t really change anything? If I took you, Lisa, you’d still be here. It’s just another copy of you that would be floating around time and space.”

  “I know.” Lisa cut an apple into slices and popped a slice into her mouth. “But it’s something, right? A way of living on. And maybe there’s a way to send back help anyway.”

  Baylou said, “I think you should take me. I’m not much use to anyone here, after all! No one would miss me.”

  “That’s the point,” Myell said, but it was useless; they either didn’t want to understand what the blue ring would do, or didn’t care anyway. Cappaletto’s honesty and witty tales had hurt the situation all around.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Lisa said. She looked at the clock. “Round noon, right? That’s when it’s coming for you?”

  “It’ll come for both me and Chief Cappaletto,” Myell said. “Where is he?”

  “Oh, you’ll see him,” Baylou said.

  “I’d like to see him now.”

  “Around noon,” Lisa repeated. Not for the first time he saw Jodenny in her, and under other circumstances might have been pleased.

  “Noon,” he said. Sure.

  Lisa patted his hand. “Maybe you should go back to bed for a while. Rest up. We’ll sort this out and come get you.”

  It was almost nine o’clock. Myell couldn’t be sure how short this eddy would be with Cappaletto’s weight changing the window, but he wasn’t about to wait around and find out. He retired to the guest room, climbed out the window, and made his way to Sheriff Alice’s house. He didn’t have the time or inclination for anything but the direct approach, so he knocked on the door. Alice answered.

  “What are you doing here so early?” she asked.

  He punched her in the face. He wasn’t used to punching women in the face and hurt his knuckles doing it. Cappaletto, who was half undressed, caught Alice before she could crash to the floor. He laid her out carefully on the sofa.

  “Why’d you do that?” Cappaletto demanded.

  “Because we have to get out of here.”

  “You couldn’t just lock her in the closet?”

  Myell threw him a shirt. “Put your clothes on. We’ve got to go.”

  He took Cappaletto into the jungle. They heard search parties a while later, but Myell knew the land and figured they wouldn’t search as far as Balandra Bridge. They hunkered down in the cave by the river where Myell, Jodenny, and the kids had once camped out. Cappaletto looked unimpressed with the accommodations but took an interest when Myell produced the small kitchen knife he’d stolen from Lisa’s house.

  “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?” Cappaletto asked. “I didn’t know what they were planning.”

  “It’s not for you,” Myell assured him. “I’m not even sure I need it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Every Wondjina ring I’ve ever seen has glyphs inside to guide it. The blue ring? Nothing. It needs some kind of guidance. First it was following my wedding ring inscription. After it was stolen, it started following my thoughts. Thinking about Kultana took me one place, and thinking about the Roon took me to you and Adryn in the mines.”

  “If all you have to do is think real hard, why did you carve the name ‘Kay’ on your arm?”

  “In case I wasn’t conscious when the ring came,” he said. “Kay is Jodenny’s nickname.”

  Cappaletto sat back, satisfied. “Where to now?”

  He thought about that for a while, then scratched the Yangtze’s name into his arm. Then he carved a date.

  “Nice place,” Cappaletto said, as they strolled down the promenade on the Yangtze. “Pity it’s going to blow up in a few months.”

  “At least the date worked,” Myell said. He had a pounding headache, and the smell of food from the cafés they passed wasn’t helping at all. Without yuros or debit cards, they had no way of purchasing even the cheapest painkiller.

  Cappaletto grabbed some French fries from a neglected plate and shoved them into his mouth. He was still gaunt and pale from the mines, though he didn’t complain about fatigue or hunger. Myell figured he wasn’t the complaining type. Cappaletto said, “Good job. Though maybe you could just draw on yourself with ink instead of blood? That cutting thing is kind of gross.”

  One of the shops they passed sold stationery and writing instruments. Cappaletto, clever with his fingers, took Myell down an aisle and stole a few pens. “Because it won’t do to have just one and lose it,” he said. On their way out they passed Jodenny and Sam Osherman, the two of them looking ridiculously infatuated with each other. Myell kept walking.

  He penned the name of the Confident, and picked a week before the ambush at Kultana. Instead they wound up on Fortune with the Confident in docking orbit high above. The ACF and Team Space fleet was just beginning to assemble for the long haul to meet the Roon armada. Myell figured his destination hadn’t worked because there already wa
s a Tom Cappaletto on the Confident, and he couldn’t bring another one into the eddy.

  Cappaletto, who’d kindly mugged a businessman for some yuros, smiled broadly at the waitress who brought them fish and chips. They were sitting in a darkened pub at noontime with the bright daylight kept at bay by screened windows. Cappaletto hadn’t been planetside before, and was pleased by the beer he’d sampled so far.

  He said, “As much as I appreciate this tour of history, Terry—and I do appreciate it, mind you—you can’t keep dragging me around with you, right? The trips are getting shorter and you’re getting sicker each time we land.”

  Myell knew that was true. He also knew, based on his experience with Kyle and Twig, that he could keep going for several more jumps. He explained that to Cappaletto, who said, “Still, don’t you want to have some kind of plan or other?”

  “I have a plan.” Myell reached for his own beer. “Find my wife and baby. The ones Homer said he saved.”

  “Oh, yes, Homer,” Cappaletto said. “Your invisible friend from the future who hasn’t shown up since I’ve known you.”

  “I don’t trust him,” Myell said.

  The waitress brought them more beer. Outside, the sun moved across the sky and shadows grew longer in the street. On the overvids, Dunredding won a soccer game against Carver North. Myell kept his eyes on the shadows, watching for any sign of the Flying Doctor. He wasn’t naive enough to think the Roon had abandoned its mission.

  Cappaletto said, “Trust him or not, he’s got the answers you need. You want to find your wife and kid, he’s the place to start.”

  The pub doors opened, letting in an afternoon crowd of business folk. Myell said, “You don’t have to keep coming along if you don’t want to. You can walk out that door. You’ve done enough.”

  Cappaletto thought about it for a while. “You leave, this place might evaporate. That’s what you think happens, right? The whatever, the eddy, washes away.”

  “Maybe. I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure.”

  They finished their beer. The soccer game played out. The men and women at the bar, so uniform in their business attire, began to drink themselves silly.

  “I’ll take my chances with you,” Cappaletto said.

  Myell started writing on his arm. “Next stop, Homer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The blue ocean heaved and rolled for as far as the eye could see, or at least as far as Myell dared look. His stomach made a sick twist just breathing in the fresh salty air. Cappaletto was standing on the edge of the cliff looking down, because he was a crazy American. The sun was blistering hot and the People gathered around Myell kept touching him, as if for good luck.

  “You jumped off this?” Cappaletto asked.

  “Long story,” Myell said. “I need some help here.”

  Cappaletto helped shoo off the crowd to make room for Shark Tooth, leader of these Aboriginal Australians. Shark Tooth was considerably older and grayer than Myell remembered him. By his best guess, they had landed maybe twenty years after Myell’s last visit. The village hadn’t grown much since then, but it was busy in the afternoon sun. Shark Tooth was so happy to see Myell that he almost hugged the air right out of him.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Myell said.

  The villagers set about preparing a feast, which Myell appreciated but really didn’t look forward to. His stomach had settled a little but his headache was back, and he felt achy all over as if coming down with the flu.

  “Homer,” he said to Shark Tooth. “We’re looking for a man who calls himself Homer.”

  Shark Tooth spread his arms wide. “Homer!”

  “We’re looking for him,” Myell said.

  Cappaletto said, “Maybe that’s the name of the village. Homerville. Homer City.”

  Which was possible, if not plausible. When Myell, Nam, Gayle, and a bunch of marines had come through the first time, in search of Gayle’s husband and his team, they’d been a bit too busy to learn the name of the place.

  “So now what?” Cappaletto asked. “We drink bad wine and make nice with the native women until the ring shows up again?”

  Myell dared a look toward the open ocean. “There’s a Wondjina Sphere on one of the islands along this coast. And a group of women far more familiar with the Wondjina gods than I am. Maybe they can help.”

  Cappaletto eyed the horizon. “Island, eh? We’d better find us a boat.”

  The People weren’t too happy about it, but finally Myell got Shark Tooth to walk them down a path from the cliff to the sea. Shark Tooth was much more unhappy when Myell proposed, through gestures, the idea that he and Cappaletto were going to take one of the tribe’s long narrow canoes out for an excursion. Shark Tooth made his displeasure known by sitting in the boat with both arms across his chest.

  “I guess you can come with us,” Myell said.

  Cappaletto paddled, because Myell was too busy clutching the sides of the canoe for dear life to be of much use. Funny how his fear of the ocean never really had gone away, death or godhood notwithstanding. Shark Tooth apparently didn’t think much of Cappaletto’s rowing, because he finally grabbed one of the long thin paddles and took over the job himself.

  “Does he know where we’re going?” Cappaletto asked, shading his eyes against the sun.

  Myell blew out a breath, hoping to calm his queasiness. “I don’t even know where we’re going. But the women are out here somewhere.”

  Shark Tooth finally beached them on a stretch of sand and scrub that looked vaguely familiar. Myell’s watery legs supported him long enough to get him up to the high tide mark, where he sat with complete relief. Shark Tooth and Cappaletto dragged the canoe up into the sand and Shark Tooth went off into a long incomprehensible story in his own tongue, waving his hand to illustrate.

  “Beats me,” Cappaletto said.

  Myell got himself upright. “I don’t know. Let’s find the village. It’s here somewhere.”

  They headed off into the jungle along a path grown over with grass. Myell told himself the women and children used another path now, had abandoned this one for some reason, but he couldn’t rid himself of a growing apprehension. After several minutes of swatting at flies and pushing vines out of their way, they came to the painted Child Sphere he remembered from a long night of drinking and dancing and divine preparation.

  The Sphere was broken. Half of its topmost part had been crushed in as if by a giant thumb. The bridges and tree houses that Myell remembered hung in ruins from the trees like banners from that long-ago party. Some dead trees bore scorch marks along the length of their trunks, and there were no sounds of birds, insects, or other animal life in what had once been the main clearing. Even the grass was dead. The place smelled like burned flesh, and things that had rotted into the dirt.

  Cappaletto said nothing, which Myell was grateful for. Shark Tooth turned in a circle three times and stomped down his foot, as if warding off evil spirits.

  “Not what I expected,” Myell managed.

  “Looks like an army tore through,” Cappaletto said.

  If there’d been any survivors, they were long gone. If Shark Tooth knew the story, the language barrier kept him from sharing it. The nausea that had been his companion during the canoe trip rose up again, and maybe Cappaletto read it in his face.

  “There’s nothing here, Terry,” he said. “Let’s go back.”

  Shark Tooth led the way back to the beach, where he and Cappaletto set to work hauling the canoe back into the water and Myell, standing near the grass and rocks, sought to steady himself. The wind over the water made a lonely sound. Birds that had been scarce inland—gulls and cormorants, and egrets, too—whirled through the sky. Myell tried not to think it was his fault that ruin had come to Ishikawa and her friends, but the suspicion remained.

  He stared down at his arm, at the word Homer now faded into skin. A rustling in the grass made him turn to see an enormous crocodile racing toward him, its claws kicking up sand, its raz
or-sharp jaws opened so wide he could see down the beast’s gullet.

  “Stop!” Myell yelled, as if crocodiles took orders—as if this crocodile did, because he recognized the markings. Cappaletto and Shark Tooth yelled something that he couldn’t quite make out in his panic. “No, wait—”

  The crocodile barreled forward, grabbed him with its jaws, and dragged him into the ocean.

  “You’re a fool,” Free-not-chained said, for not the first time in the dark seaweed-smelling sea cave she called home. “A fool to come back here, as if you could change things now!”

  She was in her human form—slight and long-haired, her skin a fine mesh of tiny scales. He wasn’t sure if he preferred her as a human or as a crocodile. She’d saved his life at least twice during his last stay on the planet, for which he was indebted. But he didn’t trust her much.

  He sat back on a wet rock and rubbed his head. “Change what things?”

  “Your son,” she retorted.

  Myell almost slid off the rock.

  “My what?”

  She paced the cave angrily. One end of it tapered into the sea. The other end, perhaps ten meters distanct, twisted off into caves under the reef. Myell’s chest and back ached from where her teeth had dragged him along. If she were a real crocodile, or at least the kind known on Earth and the Seven Sisters, he’d be dead by now. Her teeth, however, hadn’t even broken his skin.

  Free-not-chained folded down to the floor, changed into crocodile form, and slithered out of the cave.

  He followed, of course. There was nothing to do but follow. Through the narrow, sloping caves with water puddled on the floor, past open pools full of fish, along passages barely wide enough for him to pass without scraping himself raw. The only light came from glowing sea moss on the cave walls. The steady slosh of the sea around them made him nervous. High tide could sweep in and drown him, or maybe a tsunami would roll in. It would be just his luck to die in a tsunami.

  “Why did you bring me here if you don’t want to talk to me?” he called out. “And what son?”